Can nudging consumers to make more nutritious grocery choices work? Can discounts and coupons alter our choices? A new study looks at personalized grocery shopping, with an eye towards nutrition and a gentle push motivated by savings.
food choices
A new survey from Michigan State University provides a somewhat depressing glimpse of the current understanding of food by the American public. And this is particularly disturbing because younger folks are less well informed than their elders.
When a well-respected researcher proposes a strange way to influence people's food choices – with the goal of reducing obesity – one must pay attention, but not necessarily go along on that particular ride.
The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. or SNAP, has successfully addressed food security – but it hasn't helped improve the diets of at-risk consumers. But now, the availability of online sales provides an opportunity where data and consumer feedback can be used to improve food choices for those facing significant health problems.
If you follow the thinking of some activists, you'd think that the only way to get consumers to make better food and beverage choices is to tax the less healthy ones — usually sugar-sweetened beverages. But Maryland's Howard County just may have found a better way to influence (and educate) consumers.
How do we get people to make better food choices — to decrease the amounts of calories, fat and sugar in their diets? A new study examined the potential of restricting "unhealthy" food choices vs. incentivizing "healthier" choices, to influence purchasing practices of low-income Americans. The upshot: Both can work, especially in combination.
Age plays a role in how people view food and make food choices, as depicted by a recent survey. In particular, baby boomers and millennials differ as to (1) whom they most trust to advise them about foods, and (2) what health aspects of food they're most concerned about.
New research supports using so-called traffic light labeling, in addition to numeric labels, to help consumers make healthier food selections. When both types of labels were combined on food items, consumers' choices were based less on taste than they had been when only numeric labels were used.
Four years ago, a federal law specified that chain restaurants with more than 20 outlets be required to post the calorie contents of their foods (menu labeling, or ML). The rationale for the law was that if consumers could get a realistic idea of the energy content of their foods, it might encourage them to choose foods with fewer calories and thus help reduce the burden of obesity. But the extent to which restaurant patrons actually use ML to decrease calorie consumption hasn t yet been determined.