We make decisions every day. But why do we choose crisps instead of a cucumber? Harm Veiling of the Radbout University Nijmegen spoke about how the consumer thinks during the European Vegetable Strategies congress. "The intention to eat healthy is there, but consumers continue to make the wrong choices and the number of cases of obesity are only rising. How is this possible? A lot of people care."
Calorie rich food
"They have the best intentions to eat healthily, but fail again and again," explains Harm. According to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) over 50% of the population is overweight or obese. Intentions don't actually change our eating behaviour. There is a part of the brain that makes people attracted to food that is richer in calories when they look at it. This is magnified when people are hungry. People are so sensitive to 'bad' and high calorie food, that if you give them a larger portion, they will even eat more."
Crisps are fun
"People also think more about characteristics like flavour and actually eating the product when it comes to 'unhealthy food'. Crisps make people think salty, crispy, tasty and fun. Healthy food, like cucumber, tend to be linked to physical characteristics, such as the length, the colour or the fact that it grows on a plant and is healthy."
When hungry people tend to eat unhealthily
"When looking to see if adverts for fruit influence consumption, researchers made children play memory games, on the back of which fruit or sweets were advertised. After five minutes of playing the children could choose between apples, bananas, m&ms and cola bottles. They were told: eat as much as you like. What happened? Children didn't eat more fruit after the fruit advertisement. All children preferred sweets, whether advertised fruit or sweets. All in all it was concluded that when advertised food, healthy or unhealthy, people get hungry, and when hungry are more likely to pick unhealthy over healthy."
Difficult to make a healthy choice
"A lot of people want to eat healthily, but also have fun and enjoy their food. These are two important goals. If people see unhealthy and high energy food, they momentarily lose sight of their healthy eating goal. And that's a problem as our environment is often overrun with 'high-energy' food. This makes it difficult for people to make a healthy decision."
What can we do about it?
"What we shouldn't do is put fresh fruit at the check out instead of other 'attractive' food. It doesn't work. Changing the environment doesn't suddenly change our brain," says Harm. "This is the case at schools that have healthy canteens. You often see children pop to the supermarket in their break. But it is possible to make people make a healthy choice in specific cases. At an American salad bar people picked vegetables more often when they could reach them more easily. By placing the healthy products in a certain place people chose them more often. At a walking buffet people tend to eat more healthy products if they come first. But these are specific examples. What could also work is reminding people that they think healthy food is important. Another example is a packaging with a special picture or character. This makes healthy food attractive to children."
Conclusion
"We have to make sure that a healthy choice becomes an impulsive choice. People also have to be reminded of their healthy intentions at the right time."