Health halos driven by branding or
by marketing, health or nutrition claims do not simply change expectations but
can act as a placebo and change post-intake evaluations and consumption.
Robinson et al. (2007) found that children thought the same food tasted better
when it was branded McDonald’s. Raghunathan et al. (2006) found that a smoothie
was judged to taste better when described as a product “generally considered
healthy”. Lee, Frederick and Ariely (2006) found that adding vinegar improved the
taste of beer, but only when it was described as a special ingredient, not when
described as vinegar. Interestingly, the description had no effect when it was
revealed after tasting, suggesting that ingredient branding affected
preferences by influencing the experience itself rather than by acting as an
independent negative input or by modifying retrospective interpretation of the
experience. Marketing descriptions can even influence biological responses.
Crum et al. (2011) found that descriptions of the same milkshake as either
“indulgent” or “sensible” influenced physiological atiation as measured by gut
peptide ghrelin levels. Neuroimaging studies (Plassmann et al. 2008) have shown
that marketing actions influence not just self-reported liking but also its
neural representations, suggesting that these effects are not merely influenced
by social desirability when reporting subjective experience.
Health halos influence the volume
of food consumption and can lead to overeating, defined as people eating more
without being aware of it. For example, one study found that adding adjectives
like “succulent” or “homemade” boosted sales by up to 28% (Wansink, van
Ittersum and Painter 2005). Provencher, Polivy and Herman (2008) noted a 35%
greater intake of a cookie described as a healthy “oatmeal snack” rather than
an indulgent “gourmet cookie”, regardless of the weight consciousness or
dietary restraints of the participant. When Chandon and Wansink (2007a) asked
people to imagine that they had received a coupon for either a McDonald’s Big
Mac (containing 600 calories and generally considered unhealthy) or a coupon
for a foot-long Subway sandwich (a chain generally considered healthy, even
though this particular sandwich contains 900 calories), participants ordered
111 calories worth of dessert and sodas to go with the “healthy” sandwich
versus 48 calories with the “unhealthy” burger. … In another study, Wansink and
Chandon (2006a) found that labeling both “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods as
“low fat” reduced calorie estimation by 20% to 25%, and increased what was considered
to be the “appropriate serving size” by 20%. More importantly, we found that
labeling chocolate candies as “low fat” increased consumption during one meal
occasion by 16% among normal-weight people and by 46% among overweight
individuals, but had no effect on their estimates of the number of calories
that they had consumed.
The author points out that these reactions do vary by type
of consumer. It also turns out that you can influence how heavy the consumer
thinks a package is by changing the placement of the image of the product on
the package: lower means heavier. But
possibly most significant is that consumers have no idea this is happening:
Remarkably, people do not believe that
packaging influences how much they eat and are largely unaware when it does. … Labeling
chocolate candies as “low-fat” increased actual calorie intake by 46% among overweight
people but increased their perceived calorie intake by only 8%. Finally, people
overlooked up to 50% of the quantity increase in large meals and packages
despite their best effort . These effects stand in contrast to other marketing
actions like price change (which influence consumers through conscious
decisions) or advertising (which consumers know is trying to persuade them) –
persuasive attempts that are anticipated by adult consumers.
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