Healthiness Of Food Products Research Articles

EXPRESS: To Dispose or Eat? the Impact of Perceived Healthiness on Consumption Decisions for About-to-Expire Foods

Perceived healthiness of food is generally regarded as a positive attribute in food choices as it positively impacts consumers’ preferences. The current research demonstrates that in contexts where there is a time delay between a food’s production and its consumption (referred to as “about-to-expire” food), strong perceptions of a food’s healthiness can be detrimental. This is because consumers hold a lay theory that healthy food expires more quickly. In eight studies ( N = 3,552), we find that merely portraying food as healthy increases the perception that it expires quickly and that this effect attenuates when consumers hold the lay theory weakly or have a high level of knowledge about food expiration. Importantly, this lay theory leads consumers to avoid consuming healthy (vs. non-healthy) about-to-expire food, resulting in increased disposal intentions and decreased preferences. In designing sales promotions for about-to-expire food, managers should consider the healthiness of food products, as consumers prefer different types of sales promotions and require different magnitudes of price discounts for healthy (vs. non-healthy) about-to-expire food. Finally, adding an expiration date label that provides unambiguous guidance (i.e., “consume by”) can effectively mitigate the detrimental effect of perceived healthiness on the consumption for about-to-expire food.

Is it good for me? A content analysis of the healthiness of foods advertised in magazines

ABSTRACT This paper used Fooducate product ratings to evaluate the healthiness of food products being advertised in 15 U.S. magazines over a 1-year period (N = 623 food products), and compared those ratings across product categories, magazine genres, types of claims, and the presence of endorsement seals. Novel food rating apps like Fooducate offer scholars the ability to credibly assess food products in analyses of media content. In line with the academic grading scale where “A” is excellent and “D/F” is poor/failing, results indicate an average grade of approximately a “C+” (M = 2.57; SD = 0.80). Products in the ingredient, beverage and food pyramid categories received the highest scores, whereas foods high in fat/sugar, dietary supplements, and prepackaged meals scored significantly lower. Of the five magazine genres explored, health and food magazines featured the healthiest foods while fashion and women’s magazines featured the least healthy. In addition, products making health claims were significantly healthier than products without such claims, supporting their accuracy. Finally, advertisements with endorsement seals had the highest health ratings of any category assessed. Implications based on previous work in food advertising research are discussed, such as the benefit of including this topic in adult nutrition literacy initiatives.

Changing the Rules of the Game: The Legitimacy of CSR Standards

In order for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards to promote socially responsible behavior in industry, they need endure over the long-term by responding to the dynamics of society. Revisions of their content are thus necessary to maintain both their input legitimacy – the socially constructed norms are accepted as fair and effective by society – and their output legitimacy – the extent to which standards are actually able to standardize the behavior of its adopters. By studying the effects of the standards underlying a front-of-pack label indicating the healthiness of food products, our study shows that a) making CSR standards more aligned with the views of civil society can increase the average social value created, but that b) de-certifications of products due to stricter standards demotivates firms to invest in enhancing compliance. The article concludes that revisions of CSR standards can only improve both types of legitimacy if the subsequent changes in firm behavior are visible and transparently reported by the standardization organization.

Food habits and attitudes towards food quality among young students

PurposeThe food consumption has always received a lot of attention in the marketing literature, as it tends to reflect and determine the overall consumer behaviour, expression of the individual lifestyle. Nevertheless, less attention has been devoted to the young. This paper aims at analysing how university students, a segment of young people, perceive and evaluate the quality of food and which attributes most influence their food choice and consumption.Design/methodology/approachAn online questionnaire was carried out from March to December 2015 among Italian university students. A sample of 1,138 people took part in the survey. Data were elaborated through SPSS 21.0 statistical software package.FindingsFindings suggest a number of interesting points. First, a high attention of university students towards price and sales promotion was observed. Nevertheless, they are well informed in food products they buy and pay high attention to ingredients, origin and healthiness of food products. Finally, performing a principal component analysis three different components on food store selection were found, namely, “Price saving”, “Convenience” and “Food assortment and quality”.Practical implicationsA more comprehensive understanding of the food behaviour of the young could be useful for marketing researchers and practitioners to define marketing programs aimed at satisfying the food demand of a growing segment of the market.Originality/valueThe food behaviour of young people as a whole has been little addressed in the marketing literature. Existing studies have explored specific topics such as the consumption of organic food, fast-food buying habits or alcohol abuse.

Neural correlates of the healthiness evaluation processes of food labels

Objectives: This fMRI study evaluated the cognitive mechanisms and the cerebral substrates when evaluating the healthiness of food products from nutritional information displayed either with a traffic light (TL) system, a colored nutritional label, or with a guideline daily amount (GDA) system, a numeric label. We postulated that TL label would recruit emotional processes and activation of subjacent cerebral regions (e.g. insula and amygdala). On the contrary, the nutritional information presented in a GDA label, would recruit, due to its numeric format and higher complexity, supplementary cognitive processes and activation of related brain regions (e.g. middle and superior frontal as well as parietal cortices).Methods: We examined 50 healthy participants during an evaluation task on the healthiness of real food products from nutritional information only. Per total, 60 food products nutritional labels have been presented, with either colored (TL) or numeric (GDA) nutritional information and three levels of complexity of nutritional information.Results: In line with our predictions, evaluations based on GDA recruited prefrontal and parietal regions reported for analytic processes. Contrary to our predictions, the same network has been recruited when evaluations were based on TL. Finally, we found significant correlation between response time and the superior parietal lobule in the GDA condition.Discussion: Our results suggested that TL did not have an effect on the used strategy compared to GDA, based on calculation and arithmetic processes. Correlations between response time and brain activations suggested a significant involvement of the arithmetic mechanisms in the evaluation of food healthiness.

Does environmental friendliness equal healthiness? Swiss consumers’ perception of protein products

Food production and consumption have major impacts on the environment. At the same time, changes in human diets worldwide are increasingly leading to health problems. Both issues are highly influenced by consumers’ everyday food choices and could be addressed by reducing consumption of meat and other animal products. To promote sustainable food consumption, we need to know how consumers perceive the environmental friendliness and healthiness of food products, on which criteria they base their evaluations of environmental friendliness and healthiness, and how their estimations relate to life cycle assessments and nutrient profiling. We presented 30 protein products, which varied in provenance, production methods, and processing, to 85 participants from Switzerland. They were asked to sort the products once according to their perceived environmental friendliness and once according to their perceived healthiness. The mean distances between the products were compared to the products’ life cycle assessments and nutrient profiles. The results showed that perceived environmental friendliness and healthiness are highly correlated. The main predictors of the products’ perceived environmental friendliness were product category, presence of an organic label, and provenance; and for perceived healthiness, these predictors were product category, fat content, processing, and presence of an organic label. Environmental friendliness and healthiness estimations were significantly correlated to the life cycle assessments and the nutrient profiles of the products, respectively. Hence, to promote healthy and environmentally friendly food choices, motivators related to environmental friendliness and healthiness could be used in synergy. Awareness about meat’s environmental impact should be increased and better information is needed for consumers to make an accurate environmental impact and healthiness assessments of protein products.

Influence of Marketing on Preschoolers’ Product Preference

ObjectiveTo determine the influence of, and factors associated with, the influence of cartoon character food label marketing on preschoolers’ product preferences.MethodsParents (n=46) completed online surveys and children (n=46), 4–6 years old, completed card sorting methodologies.Outcomes MeasuredDemographic information (income, ethnicity, parental education, and gender), self‐reported parental dietary quality, parental ability to identify overall nutrient composition of specific foods, and influence of cartoon character marketing on children's product preferences were assessed.ResultsPreschoolers were more likely to prefer products with food label cartoon character marketing (p<0.05). Preschoolers were more likely to be influenced by cartoon character marketing if they were male; black; their parent's had lower levels of education; their parent's were less able to identify the overall healthiness of food products; or their parent's had less healthy diets (p<0.05).ConclusionsDifferences in the level of influence of cartoon character marketing on food labels varies by sociodemographic indicators.