I’m stoked! I’ve finally come across a (semi-) learned study which attempts to identify factors that influence healthy eating choices and habits, and its findings agree with my observations, gleaned over many years of watching the food scene. Well, at least some of them do…
The Carrot Dog: A spoof ‘product’ designed by Veggie advocates to poke back
at Meat advocates who had previously unveiled the Marrot – a ‘Meat-based
Carrot’. Mimicking Meat is not the best way to get folks to go Veggie;
but it’s the best idea anybody’s come up with, yet…
We eat with our eyes
A team of researchers at Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University (SDSU) have studied the sensory impact of food and the evolution of healthy eating. Specifically, they’ve looked into how the sounds, colours and images of foods influence our choices. Yes, they are marketing researchers, not nutrition experts. But their theory is that, as first Century CE arch-foodie Marcus Gavius Apicius wrote, “We eat first with our eyes.”
SDSU Associate Professor Dr. Morgan Poor, who has studied the impact of food on the senses knows firsthand how just an image of food can have a sensory and emotional effect on individuals, explains: “Seeing a photo of a Hamburger, for example, can stimulate other sensory images, causing individuals to imagine the taste or smell of that Hamburger.”
My take:
Okay. That explains, in one simple sentence, why the whole concept of advertising works in the first place. But what about overriding countervailing pressures or conditions?
Making healthy foods attractive
By inference, the foregoing rule dictates that we should be able to make healthy food more attractive to folks of we take the same approach to ‘advertising’ it as the pushers of Hamburgers and o0tyher Fast or Convenience foods.
With that in mind, a team from SDSU led by Dr. Paula Peter determined that associating healthy food with pleasurable experiences and emotions led to greater interest among consumers in purchasing or eating it.
The researchers cited a successful marketing campaign by Bolthouse Farms to reverse the sales decline of their brand of Baby Carrots. The campaign did not emphasize the Carrots’ healthy qualities, but embraced the sensory pleasure derived from eating them. For example, the neon orange color, crispy texture and crinkly sound of the packaging mimicked some of the characteristics of certain ‘junk foods’ and led to an increase in product sales of 10 to 12 percent.
My take: I’m intrigued that folks were coerced into buying Carrots – and a style of Carrot (‘Baby’) that is usually premium-priced, at that – by such simple ploys. So why aren’t healthy food activists and producers already using this method of promotion extensively? Simply making the products more attractive does not address the real, underlying causes of the problem.
Mitigating factors
The same research also revealed that the two primary barriers to building pleasurable experiences around healthy foods are time and money. Time is needed to seek out the necessary ingredients to assemble a healthy meal or find a restaurant that serves good-tasting, healthy food, where money is needed to purchase the restaurant meals or the ingredients (as well as the knives, pans and other tools) to create the end product.
Based on numerous studies, the professors concluded that money, more so than distance to the food or lack of time, is the primary barrier to healthy food access. (Italics mine.)
My take: Well, hallelujah! I’ve been saying this for years and nobody seemed to care, much less pick up on the idea. Now, though, the SDSU resesrchers confirm that the consumers who most need access to healthier, more nutritious food are chronically less able to afford it: low-income families and those on fixed incomes.
The Study report abstract observes: “[Team members have] done extensive research on access to healthy foods (including Fresh Produce) for people living in lower income and ethnically-diverse neighborhoods. Residents of underserved communities do not always have access to supermarkets and may rely on smaller food stores, liquor stores or corner stores to meet their food needs. These smaller stores are limited in the amount of healthy foods they can offer. However, distributors require minimum order quantities to cover their delivery costs and, in many cases, these minimum order requirements exceed store needs.”
My observation: It would be much harder to change the way the major produce distributors do business than it would to set up some kind of alternative distribution network that would not result in even higher retail prices for consumers than they face now at most supermarkets.
Guess they’ll go eat worms…
Study leader Peter proposes what she says is the ideal solution to the inability of neediest folks to access nutrition-rich foods: Let ’em eat Bugs.
Peter notes that some eastern cultures already embrace eating insects such as Crickets and Grubs – which are nigh in Protein and other nutrients. They generally like ’em dried or roasted. Alas, some western supermarket chains have tried marketing processed (roasted and ground) Crickets as ‘Insect-based Protein Powder’ (see photo, top of page). Apparently, the body builders and other customary purchasers of dietary supplements did not bite.
My take: We’re just not ready for that, yet. Too many associations with stuff that occupies the same dreaded corner of our ancestral memories as snakes and ‘monsters’. And that’s another observation in support of my assertion, posted here a couple of days ago, that the changeover from conventional sources of Protein (Animal sources) to Vegetable sources – a seemingly much easier task – will take decades, and require a buffering stage involving easing folks into Veggie fare by first offering Veggie Proteins disguised as ‘real’ Meat.
The real solution to the basic problem…
… Of getting folks to eat more healthy foods (i.e.- Fresh Produce) is not to advertise it differently but for government and food chain participants to make it more available, at lower cost to those who need it most. We could have almost instantly started offering ‘ugly’ and surplus food to low income and fixed income folks when the idea was first floated over a year ago. Why aren’t we doing that? That’s a question for a whole separate post, another day…
~ Maggie J.