Food
cues undermine healthy eating choices
Universiteit van
Amsterdam (UVA)
Obesity has become a
major health issue due to the current 'obesogenic' environment in which
unhealthy food is both easy and cheap to purchase.
As a result, many
(government) organisations encourage healthy eating habits among the general
public by providing information on healthy diets.
Nevertheless, when
people encounter stimuli that they have learned to associate with certain
snacks, they tend to choose those products, even when they know these are
unhealthy.
This is the finding of research carried out by psychologists Aukje Verhoeven, Poppy Watson and Sanne de Wit from the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
The researchers
investigated the effects of health warnings on food choices in the presence or
absence of food-associated stimuli.
This includes every kind
of stimuli associated with food, including adverts that trigger thoughts of a
tasty snack or the sight or smell of food which leads to craving.
'Health warnings often
make people want to choose healthier food products, yet many still end up
picking unhealthy food products', says Verhoeven.
'We suspected this
might partly be due to the fact that people learn to associate specific cues in
their environment with certain food choices. For example, eating a cheese
burger regularly occurs in the visual presence of a large logo M. This causes a
strong association between the stimulus (the logo) and the rewarding experience
of eating a cheese burger. Simply seeing an M eventually causes us to crave a
burger and triggers a learned behaviour to head to a fast-food restaurant.
Unhealthy choices are therefore automatically activated by learned
associations, making health warnings, which focus on conscious choices,
ineffective.'
To test their
hypothesis, the researchers used a specific computer task, the Pavlovian-instrumental
transfer, in a controlled setting to simulate the learning processes between
certain (food) choices and environmental stimuli in subjects.
'Health warnings for
healthy food choices only seem to be effective in an environment where no food
cues are present. Whenever stimuli are present which people have come to
associate with certain snacks, they choose the accompanying (unhealthy) food
product, even when they know it is unhealthy or aren't really craving that food
product. It didn't matter whether we alerted the subjects before or after they
learned the associations with food cues', says Verhoeven.
How do you ensure
people don't just have the intention to buy healthier food products but
actually go ahead and do so?
The researchers
suggest decreasing the level of food-associated stimuli people, and children in
particular, are exposed to.
One way to do this,
for example, would be to decrease the amount of advertising for unhealthy
foods.
Also, the results
suggest that these processes could in turn stimulate the choice for healthy
products.
Verhoeven: 'It is
worthwhile exposing people to healthy food products together with certain
environmental cues more often, for example by showing more adverts for healthy
products. The environment could also be shaped such that healthy choices are
the easiest to make, for instance by placing healthy products at the front in
canteens or by replacing chocolate bars with apples and healthy snacks at the
cash register. In this way, you give people a gentle push in the right
direction.'
