Behavioral Economics insights and healthy eating habits

How can we encourage healthy eating habits with Behavioral Economics? Let's explore some recommendations for your marketing strategy based on the scientific article by Christina Roberto (2020).

I'm pretty sure... almost all of us have found ourselves at some point eating foods that we shouldn't eat simply because they could give us great pleasure in the present moment (thank you very much present bias). In my case, I can't resist eating a pizza instead of a salad... my Italian culture is in charge of this choice!).

The real problem is that most of the eating decisions we make, engage System 1 processing, rather than System 2, making it harder for people to make healthy choices that can benefit us in the long run. This is even more difficult if we make these decisions in food environments that encourage the consumption of unhealthy foods.

So, how can we encourage healthy eating habits with Behavioral Economics? While reading the article by Christina Roberto (2020), I found the following principles of Behavioral Economics very interesting, which we can apply to our marketing strategy to help people (and ourselves) adopt healthier eating habits in current food environments.

Positive emotions and Halo Effect

According to economics, one way to persuade people to adopt a behavior is to provide them with information, since people are supposed to be Homo Economicus. However, emotional associations can be a more powerful tool for influencing people's decision making and behavior.

For example, many companies use celebrities to market their products with the goal of creating positive associations between a brand and the consumer. They hope that the positive associations that people have with the celebrity will be transferred to the associated product (Halo Effect).

✅ What if we do it with healthy food? Considering influencer marketing on social media and the growing connection to organic products, additional attention can be paid to the positive association between influencers and healthy food consumption to encourage consumption.

Make it Easy

While emotions can have a greater impact on behaviors than information, in some cases it is legally required to provide it to consumers. Such information is often complicated and presented in numerical form, so people may have trouble processing it quickly or fully understanding it.

✅ Simplicity is key when providing nutritional information to help people understand and process it. In Chile, foods have been labeled with warning labels indicating high levels of sodium, sugars, saturated fats, and calories in the products (Subsecretaria de Salud Pública, 2016), but currently there is not much data on the impact on reducing consumption of these products.

Status Quo Bias and Default Options

Traditional economic theory suggests that people choose the preferred option regardless of how the options are presented. In contrast, psychologists and behavioral economists have shown that people are highly prone to stick with default options, regardless of the order of the options.

✅ Whether in restaurants or supermarkets, healthy options could be promoted as recommended options so that people are more likely to select them.

So, what?

Although in most cases we should motivate people to eat healthier, individual factors are not enough to maintain these eating habits in the long term. By changing the food environment in which people conduct decision-making or behavior, we can increase the likelihood that they will make healthier food choices.

Furthermore, when implementing behavior change solutions, companies and governments should dedicate resources to generating evidence-based results. This with the aim of creating evidence-based marketing strategies in order to promote healthy eating habits.

This is my interpretation or perspective on the scientific article. Please read the full article to explore Christina Roberto's full investigation.

Silvia Cottone

Behavioral Science Consultant & Worldwide Speaker

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Reference

Roberto, C. A. (2020). How psychological insights can inform food policies to address unhealthy eating habits. American Psychologist, 75(2), 265–273. doi:10.1037/amp0000554

Thaler, R. (2015). Unless You Are Spock, Irrelevant Things Matter in Economic Behavior. The New York Times.

The Decision Lab (2022). Homo Economicus.