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Mindless Eating and Healthy Heuristics for the Irrational
Abstract and Figures
Food choice decisions are not the same as intake volume decisions. The former determine what we eat (soup or salad); the latter determine how much we eat (half of the bowl or all of it). Large amounts of money, time, and intelligence
have been invested in understanding the physiological mechanisms that influence food choice (James O. Hill, forthcoming). Much less has been invested in understanding how and why our environment influences food consumption volume. Yet environmental factors (such as package size, plate shape, lighting, variety, or the presence of others) affect our food consumption volume far more than we realize (Wansink 2006). Whereas people can acknowledge that environmental factors influence others, they wrongly believe they are unaffected. Perhaps they are influenced at a basic level of which they are not aware. A better understanding of these drivers of consumption volume will have immediate
implications for research, policy, and personal interventions. There are three objectives of this paper: (1) explain why environmental factors may unknowingly influence food consumption; (2) identify resulting myths that may lead to is specified models or misguided policy recommendations; and (3) offer clear direction for future research, policy, and personal dietary efforts.
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... Similarly, socioeconomic pressures have played a role in raising people's aspirations about product acquisition and consumption. In the same vein, Wansink et al. (2009) argue that environmental influences play a role in mindless food over-consumption. Consumption patterns and characteristics that reflect mindless consumption may include behaviors that have negative consequences for the individual (e.g., addiction and compulsive consumption) (Bahl et al., 2016) or the environment (e.g., over-consumption leading to depletion of natural resources, pollution, and global warming) (Ozdamar Ertekin and Atik, 2015). ...
Many scholars have examined how people implement principles of mindfulness in their day‐to‐day consumption activities. Because buying in most cases precedes consumption, the present research builds a model of antecedents of mindful buying. Based on multi‐theoretical perspectives, the model posits four key variables as antecedents of mindful buying: environmental activism (self‐concept theory and collective interest model), duration of concern about the environment (life course perspective), and media and personal sources as socialization agents. The model proposes that these antecedent variables would have direct effects on mindful buying as well as indirect effect through attitudes toward the environment. The model also posits positive health outcomes of mindful buying. Using a demographically diverse sample ( N = 629, females = 51.7%), regression models were used to test for direct and indirect effects of antecedent variables on mindful buying. Findings of these analyses find support for the model. Implications for theory development, public policy and practice are also discussed.
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... Historically, more effort has been put into studying the physiological factors associated with food choice, while far fewer resources have been devoted to exploring the environmental and contextual factors that lead people to make decisions about the type and quantity of food eaten on a daily basis (Just et al., 2009). It is this joint approach that can best provide us with an interpretation of food choice that accounts for the current complex environment we face as consumers of food products. ...
The neuropsychology of food consumption is a vast subject. This chapter concentrates on how value is established at the neurophysiological level and how it is related to behaviour. This is especially pertinent to the analysis of consumer choice, which refers here to being faced with two or more options, each of which has its own set of short and long term consequences that are in conflict with one another. Situations of choice arise principally when the expected outcomes of purchasing one commodity are relatively immediate, while those of a competing purchase are delayed, e.g., the taste reward of consuming a hyper-palatable food now as opposed to a healthier life enjoyed in the longer term.
... Prior studies have hypothesized that "mindless eating" explains the poor long-term success of most weight-loss interventions and stressed the need to understand the "whys" behind food intake volume (Wansink, Just and Payne, 2009). Our results contribute to holistically understanding these "whys" by establishing that a psychological variable like mindfulness affects eating regulation but is mediated by lifestyle habits. ...
Eating regulation is a primary mechanism in effecting health behaviour changes. The study identified the roles of mindfulness as a psychological factor, along with behavioural factors like lifestyle habits and food culture as an environmental factor, comprehensively in their impact on eating regulation. A cross-sectional survey collected data from 683 adults using a structured questionnaire. A reliable and valid scale was developed to measure food culture. Univariate and multivariate statistical techniques were used. Mindfulness and lifestyle habits have a significant and positive relationship with eating regulation. Food culture attenuated eating regulation. Lifestyle habits significantly mediated the relationship between mindfulness and eating regulation. The findings of this study will be helpful to healthcare professionals and dietary advisors. In the context of the COVID 19 pandemic, prevention of obesity through eating regulation is the need of the hour, and this study shows that adopting lifestyle habit changes can help achieve this goal. The introduction of food culture as an antecedent of eating regulation and the development of a scale to measure food culture significantly contributes to the body of literature. The mediating role of lifestyle habits in achieving eating regulation has been established.
... However, consumers tend to neglect nutrition labels while shopping because of time constraints or consumption habits (Fenko et al., 2018;Guan et al., 2021). In recent decades, many studies have tried to explore the main causes of food nutrition label use by analyzing consumer factors such as knowledge and literacy (Bottcher et al., 2017;Grebitus and Davis, 2019;Shimokawa et al., 2021), attitudes, and motivation (Moreira et al., 2019;Jiang et al., 2022); environmental factors (e.g., Wansink et al., 2009;Bartels et al., 2018); or labeling factors such as effective label schemes to capture consumers' attention (e.g., Graham et al., 2012;Shimokawa, 2016;Rosenblatt et al., 2019), as well as the number and strictness of labels (Tebbe and von Blanckenburg, 2018). In general, nutrition label use has widely been considered an information search behavior based on the expected utility theory. ...
The assumption that label use behavior is, to some extent, intertemporal decision behavior because the benefit of label use cannot be realized instantly, is insufficiently considered. This paper is the first to examine directly if food nutrition label use is associated with behavioral inclinations in time preference. Using a theoretical analysis, this paper illustrates that individuals with lower present bias and higher long-run patience tend to use nutrition labels more frequently. In an empirical investigation, an analysis of a nationwide survey of 1220 Chinese adults confirmed that time preference relates to label use behavior, not only via impatience but also via hyperbolic discounting. Results of this study can help to better understand label-use behavior. They also provide important policy implications for the design of proper strategies for improving food nutrition label use, as well as help consumers in China and other developing countries choose healthier diets.
Digital world is bestowed with loads of distractions causing infinite challenges to concentrate (Kukreja, 2019). The need to take fast decisions is more dominating than taking right and mindful decisions. Food which is the basic ingredient for survival, its choice is threatened amidst rapid emails and various app notifications putting nutrition outside the window. This chapter unveils the challenges that prohibit mindful eating and the solutions that can solve the labyrinth issues of making careful food decisions.
Introduction: One important way is to provide information and required alert to a buyer on a shopping trip. The purpose of this study is to identify the importance of label of nutritional information to consumers through estimating their willingness to pay for technologies for providing nutritional information. Materials and Methods: Seven features were selected from an application that may help consumer's process nutritional information on food packaging. Then, people's willingness to pay for the service of reading and displaying nutritional information on food QR labels was investigated. In this study, multinomial logit was used to measure the effects. The data was collected through designing and completing a survey from 203 respondents from the citizens of Sari in 2019. Findings: The results of the estimation of willing to pay show fat alert attribute has the highest willing to pay (about 8 USDA) and basket attribute has the lowest willing to pay. Conclusion: Due to higher willing to pay for information and warnings about the amount of fat, salt and food allergens, it is it is suggested more information in this field should be placed on labels and along with educational brochures. This will not only lead to healthier foods, but also make it more profitable for relevant companies to take the lead.
Childhood obesity is a serious public health issue. While advertising on children’s television has been established as a contributing factor to poor dietary habits, less is known regarding the influence of food promotions in social media. Thus, this 2-part exploratory study examined the content and effects of food promotions in YouTube. Our data revealed that fruits and vegetables are more likely to be promoted on this newer platform than in television advertising. Study 2 then revealed that exposure to a promotion for healthy food was associated with more positive evaluations of the food. However, neither judgments of appropriateness nor persuasion knowledge activation were significantly associated with evaluations of the healthy food. Thus, our findings did not support the use of the persuasion knowledge model in examining covert advertising of healthy foods to children and instead provides support for the mere exposure effect.
Food serving sizes are on the rise and this increase is one factor contributing to both obesity and food waste. Hence, reducing serving size is a potentially effective strategy for lessening overconsumption and food waste—but it carries the risk that consumers may perceive the smaller serving size as too small, lowering satisfaction. This research examines the role of serving size, unit size, and self-serving on the amount of food served, consumed, and wasted, with the main objective of reducing both overconsumption and food waste while maintaining consumer satisfaction. Across four experiments, we demonstrate that consumers who are served food in smaller units consume less but waste more, while consumers who serve themselves food in smaller units consume less and waste less. When self-serving food in smaller units, consumers benefit from pause moments providing decision-making opportunities that draw attention to the serving decision, as reflected in longer serving times and greater overestimation of the served amount of food. Consequently, consumers presented with smaller unit sizes serve themselves less food—resulting in decreased consumption and waste, without lessening consumer satisfaction. These findings offer a wide range of win-win implications that are of relevance to consumers as well as to managers of restaurants, food services, and health professionals.
While nutrition science informs us of the foods we should be eating for health benefits, encouraging healthy food choices can be hard. Eating behavior and food choice are determined by many factors; thus, nutritional interventions need to be multifaceted. This chapter details the importance of eating behavior, the basic principles of behavior change, behavior change techniques, and how these can be selected. This chapter also discusses some of the evidence on the effectiveness of behavior change techniques for encouraging healthy eating and their overall value to the patient and the clinician.
How do consumers decide how many units to buy? Whereas prior research on individual consumers' purchases has focused primarily on purchase incidence and brand choice, the authors focus on the psychological process behind the purchase quantity decision. The authors propose that a simple anchoring and adjustment model describes how consumers make purchase quantity decisions and suggests how point-of-purchase promotions can increase sales. Two field experiments and two lab studies show that anchor-based promotions-presented as multiple-unit prices, purchase quantity limits, and suggestive selling-can increase purchase quantities. The final study shows that consumers who retrieve internal anchors can counter these anchor-based promotions effectively. Firms might receive net benefits from anchor-based promotions depending on whether increases in unit sales reflect increased category consumption, brand switching, variety switching, store switching, or stockpiling.
In this era of increasing obesity and increasing threats of legislation and regulation of food marketing practices, regulatory agencies have pointedly asked how "low-fat" nutrition claims may influence food consumption. The authors develop and test a framework that contends that low-fat nutrition labels increase food intake by (1) increasing perceptions of the appropriate serving size and (2) decreasing consumption guilt. Three studies show that low-fat labels lead all consumers--particularly those who are overweight--to overeat snack foods. Furthermore, salient objective serving-size information (e.g., "Contains 2 Servings") reduces overeating among guilt-prone, normal-weight consumers but not among overweight consumers. With consumer welfare and corporate profitability in mind, the authors suggest win-win packaging and labeling insights for public policy officials and food marketers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Package size, plate shape, lighting, socializing, and variety are only a few of the environmental factors that can influence the consumption volume of food far more than most people realize. Although such environmental factors appear unrelated, they generally influence consumption volume by inhibiting consumption monitoring and by suggesting alternative consumption norms. For researchers, this review suggests that redirecting the focus of investigations to the psychological mechanisms behind consumption will raise the profile and impact of research. For health professionals, this review underscores how small structural changes in personal environments can reduce the unknowing overconsumption of food.
Using self-refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation.
Fifty-four participants (BMI, 17.3 to 36.0 kg/m2; 18 to 46 years of age) were recruited to participate in a study involving soup. The experiment was a between-subject design with two visibility levels: 1) an accurate visual cue of a food portion (normal bowl) vs. 2) a biased visual cue (self-refilling bowl). The soup apparatus was housed in a modified restaurant-style table in which two of four bowls slowly and imperceptibly refilled as their contents were consumed. Outcomes included intake volume, intake estimation, consumption monitoring, and satiety.
Participants who were unknowingly eating from self-refilling bowls ate more soup [14.7+/-8.4 vs. 8.5+/-6.1 oz; F(1,52)=8.99; p<0.01] than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. This was unaffected by BMI.
These findings are consistent with the notion that the amount of food on a plate or bowl increases intake because it influences consumption norms and expectations and it lessens one's reliance on self-monitoring. It seems that people use their eyes to count calories and not their stomachs. The importance of having salient, accurate visual cues can play an important role in the prevention of unintentional overeating.
It is often believed that people overeat the foods they like. We investigated whether environmental cues such as packaging and container size are so powerful that they can increase our intake of foods that are less palatable.
In a 2 x 2 between-subjects design, 158 moviegoers in Philadelphia (57.6% male; 28.7 years) were randomly given a medium (120 g) or a large (240 g) container of free popcorn that was either fresh or stale (14 days old). Following the movie, consumption measures were taken, along with measures of perceived taste.
Moviegoers who were given fresh popcorn ate 45.3% more popcorn when it was given to them in large containers. This container-size influence is so powerful that even when the popcorn was disliked, people still ate 33.6% more popcorn when eating from a large container than from a medium-size container.
Even when foods are not palatable, large packages and containers can lead to overeating. The silver lining of these findings may be that portion size can also be used to increase the consumption of less preferred healthful foods, such as raw vegetables.
How do consumers decide how many units to buy? Whereas prior research on individual consumers' purchases has focused primarily on purchase incidence and brand choice, the authors focus on the psychological process behind the purchase quantity decision. The authors propose that a simple anchoring and adjustment model describes how consumers make purchase quantity decisions and suggests how point-of-purchase promotions can increase sales. Two field experiments and two lab studies show that anchor-based promotions-presented as multiple-unit prices, purchase quantity limits, and suggestive selling-can increase purchase quantities. The final study shows that consumers who retrieve internal anchors can counter these anchor-based promotions effectively. Firms might receive net benefits from anchor-based promotions depending on whether increases in unit sales reflect increased category consumption, brand switching, variety switching, store switching, or stockpiling.
