Stroll down the aisle of any grocery store, and you’ll see hundreds of foods touting their health benefits. Often, these benefits are described in terms of the absence of unhealthy ingredients, as in “low-carb” or “zero sugar” foods. The intention of these advertisements is to entice consumers who want to lose weight or generally eat healthier. Yet, research suggests that this messaging may actually have counterproductive effects. 

Our work has demonstrated that when eating identical foods, people led to believe that the food is high-calorie feel more full and have larger decreases in the hunger hormone ghrelin than those led to believe the food is low-calorie. (Crum, Corbin, Brownell, & Salovey, 2011). This may be because we are culturally conditioned to perceive healthy foods as restrictive and depriving, while unhealthy foods as fun and indulgent. Our research has shown that unhealthy dishes are described using more exciting, appealing, and indulgent language than are healthy dishes on restaurant menus (Turnwald et al., 2017), movies, social media posts, food recipes, and food reviews (Turnwald et al., 2022). Moreover, unhealthy foods are frequently depicted in top-grossing movies and on the accounts of social media influencers are, to the point that many of those movies and accounts would fail U.K. regulations on advertising to young people (Turnwald et al., 2020, 2022). 

On the basis of this work, we have developed interventions designed to reframe healthy foods as appealing and indulgent. In one large-scale study (Turnwald et al., 2019), we labeled some vegetable dishes in a university dining hall with language that emphasized their tastiness, while other vegetables had labels that emphasized their health benefits. Diners were not only significantly more likely to choose the taste-labeled vegetables than the health-labeled ones, but also rated the taste-labeled vegetables as more delicious. These effects have been replicated in other contexts, including buffets in corporate settings and pay-by-weight cafes (Turnwald et al., 2019). 

More recently, we have also explored whether socioeconomic status (SES) may moderate the relationship between perceiving food as healthy and unappetizing. In one study (Boles et al., 2022), identical smoothies were advertised to participants using as either pleasurable or healthy. While both low and high-SES participants expected the pleasurably-framed smoothie to be tastier, low-SES participants were significantly more likely to choose the pleasurably-framed smoothie than were high-SES participants. This suggests that framing healthy foods using taste-focused language may be particularly important for improving nutritional outcomes among low-SES people. 

Further Reading

*Boles, D. Z., *Turnwald, B. P., *Perry, M. A., & Crum, A. J. (2022). Emphasizing appeal over health promotes preference for nutritious foods in people of low socioeconomic status. Appetite. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B. P., *Anderson, K. G., Markus, H. R., & Crum, A. J. (2022). Nutritional Analysis of Foods and Beverages Posted in Social Media Accounts of Highly Followed Celebrities. JAMA Network Open (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B., *Perry, M. A., Jurgens, D., Prabhakaran, V., Jurafsky, D., Markus, H. R., & Crum, A. J. (2022). Language in popular American culture constructs the meaning of healthy and unhealthy eating: Narratives of craveability, excitement, and social connection in movies, television, social media, recipes, and food reviews. Appetite. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B. P., *Anderson, K. G., Jurafsky, D., & Crum, A. J. (2020). Five-star prices, tastier healthy item descriptions? Expensive restaurants’ descriptive menu language. Health Psychology. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B. P., & Crum, A. J. (2020). The taste-focused labeling intervention. In G. M. Walton & A. J. Crum (Eds.), Handbook of Wise Interventions: How Social-Psychological Insights Can Help Solve Problems. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

*Turnwald, B. P., *Handley-Miner, I. J., *Samuels, N. A., Markus, H. R., & Crum, A. J. (2020). Nutritional analysis of foods and beverages depicted in top-grossing US movies, 1994-2018. JAMA Internal Medicine. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B. P., Bertoldo, J. D., *Perry, M. A., Policastro, P., Timmons, M., Bosso, C., Connors, P., Valgenti, R. T., Pine, L., Challamel, G., Gardner, C. D., & Crum, A. J. (2019). Effects of taste-focused vs. health-focused labels on vegetable intake in university dining halls: A randomized controlled multi-site intervention. Psychological Science. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B. P. & Crum, A. J. (2019). Smart food policy for healthy food labeling: Leading with taste, not healthiness, to shift consumption and enjoyment of healthy foods. Preventive Medicine. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B. P., *Boles, D. Z., & Crum, A. J. (2017). Association Between Indulgent Descriptions and Vegetable Consumption: Twisted Carrots and Dynamite Beets. JAMA Internal Medicine. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

*Turnwald, B. P., Jurafsky, D., Conner, A. L., & Crum, A. J. (2017). Reading Between the Menu Lines: Are Restaurants’ Descriptions of “Healthy” Foods Unappealing? Health Psychology. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

Crum, A. J., Corbin, W., Brownell, K. & Salovey, P. (2011). Mind Over Milkshakes: Mindsets, Not Just Nutrients, Determine Ghrelin Response. Health Psychology. (DOWNLOAD) | (VIEW ON PUBLISHER'S SITE)

Research Materials

Click here to check out the Edgy Veggies Toolkit, developed in collaboration with Stanford SPARQ.