Why less healthy foods are more attractive

Do you think the environment of the shopping centers is able to model the way we make our purchase?. Little investigation has really been carried out in this regard. People say that The lighting of large surfaces is capable of inciting us when making our purchases, or that the availability of the items make us buy unnecessary or “harmful” things for our organismeither.

Why are sweets close to the box? What impact have less healthy food vs. The healthiest in our brain? Are less healthy foods more attractive than the healthiest?. Does our emotional state have something to do when making purchases or carrying a healthy diet? This article aims to answer these questions providing the latest research findings in this regard.

Content

• What is the "push"
• Less healthy food vs. healthier
• The role of our emotional state in our purchases or by wearing a healthy diet
• The role of stress in the diet
• How to promote healthier foods?
  • Conclusions
  • References

What is the "push"

There are effective strategies to cause a certain purchase behavior in the physical microenvironment of the department stores, called by Marsau and his colleagues (2011) "push". This is regulated by automatic processes that generate little cognitive load and lead us to the temptation to buy that "harmful" food despite being willing to eat healthy.

It is also determined by The availability or visibility of certain articles that generate a greater impact on consumers. This could be the reason why certain foods are packaged in attractive and striking wrappers, so that attention is directed in a few seconds towards them and does not need to go through the conscious system of our brain.

Another strategy derived from the “thrust” is the height at which a certain product is located, that is, Less healthy products are usually located at the height of our eyes. The organization of the halls is one of the most common strategies, since despite making the purchase generally in the same supermarket and knowing their corridors and placement, this will change its distribution and situation from time to time, so that we have to have to tour the supermarket completely to finish the purchase and thus observe as many products as possible.

Less healthy food vs. healthier

Rose et al. (2009) They observed that Less healthy products were positively associated with the body mass index (BMI), That is, in neighborhoods where there were greater number of businesses that offered unhealthy products, such as energy -rich snacks, the BMI increased 0.1 points.

Although these results were moderate, the authors conclude that if you want to alter the environment to improve health, increase the visibility of healthy foods would not be a sufficient strategy, since unhealthy foods play an important role in BMI. Therefore, the best option is to reduce the exposure of less healthy food while the visibility of the healthiest is increased.

A similar study carried out in 2018 by Rachel Pechey and Theresa M. Marsau At the University of Cambridge, it showed similar results. These authors concluded that Altering the availability of less healthy foods has a greater impact on health than to altering the availability of healthier foods.

They observed that the participants of their study granted higher scores to less healthy food as far as attractive is concerned, with respect to healthier foods. This reflects the tendency towards a more attractive food choice, where, perhaps, People are more receptive to food signals that find more attractive, coinciding that these are, in turn the less healthy foods.

The role of our emotional state in our purchases or by wearing a healthy diet

Not all the fault belongs to the shopping centers, since the last election is the consumer.

In this sense GRASES et al. (2019) carried out a study in which they revealed a relationship between food consumption and depression. Specifically they reflected in their results that the people who scored high in the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) significantly offered a tendency to consume lower amounts of legumes, fruits and vegetables, but greater amounts of sweets and refined sugars.

Although the authors exclude any type of causality in their study, it is true that our mood could play an important role in deciding to take some food or others in our daily diet.

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The role of stress in the diet

Similar results obtained in their work The Ansari et al. (2014), but they added the stress perceived as a variable to study. Its results reflected that the consumption of "unhealthy" food (for example, sweets, cookies, snacks, fast food, etc.) It was significantly associated positively with perceived stress, although only in women, and with depressive symptoms, both in men and women.

On the contrary, the consumption of "healthy" food (for example, fresh fruits, salads, cooked vegetables, etc.) It was significantly associated negatively with the perceived stress and the scores of the depressive symptoms for both sexes.

How to promote healthier foods?

French et al., (2001), They experienced with the price of low -fat snacks in 55 vending machines of 12 secondary schools and 12 workplaces. Their results show that price reductions of 10%, 25% and 50% Expendor were not affected by sales interventions.

From the above, a coherent step to take so that the population increases the adoption of healthy eating could consist of:

1. Increase visibility of healthy food while ..
2. The visibility of unhealthy foods is reduced.
3. Increase the price of unhealthy foods, while ..
4. The price of healthy foods is reduced.

Conclusions

It is the work of governments to promote healthy eating in citizens, hence measures should be taken as previously stated to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the best strategy to make our purchases is to make a list at home with the food we need and stick to it.

The large surfaces throw the hook, but we are the consumers who have to be clear about the feeding class that we want to carry in our day to day, or much more important, the one we need.

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References

• Marsau TM, Ogilvie D, Roland M, Suhrcke M, Kelly MP. Judging Nudging: Can Nudging Improve Population Health? BMJ. 2011; 342: D228. DOI: 10.1136/BMJ.D228.
• Rose D, Hutchinson PL, Bodor Jn, Swalm CM, Farley Ta, Cohen Da, Rice JC. Neighborhood Food Environments and Body Mass Index: The Importance of In-Store Contents. Am J Previous. 2009; 37 (3): 214-219. DOI: 10.1016/J.AMEPRE.2009.04.024.
• Pechey, r., & Marsau, T. M. (2018). Availability of Healthier vs. Less Healthy Food and Food Choice: An online experiment. BMC Public Health, 18 (1), 1296. DOI: 10.1186/S12889-018-6112-3
• The Ansari, W., Adetunji, h., & Oskrochi, R. (2014). Food and Mental Health: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOOD AND PERCEIVED STRESS AND DEPRESSive Symptoms Among University Students in the United Kingdom. Central European Journal of Public Health, 22 (2), 90-97. http: // Cejph.Szu.CZ/ARTKEY/CJP-201402-0004_FOOD-AND-MENTIAL-HEALTH-RELA.PHP
• French, s. TO., Jeffery, r. W., Story, m., Breitlow, k. K., Baxter, j. S., Hannan, p., & Snyder, M. P. (2001). Pricing and Promotion Effects on Low-Fat vending snack purchases: The Chips Study. American Journal of Public Health, 91 (1), 112-117. https: // ajph.Aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.91.1.112
• GRASES, g., Colom, m. TO., Sanchis, p., & GRASES, F. (2019). Possible RELATION BETWEEN CONSUMPTION OF DIFFERENT FOOD GROUPS AND DEPRESSION. BMC Psychology, 7 (1), 14. https: // bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/S40359-019-0292-1