Emphasis on flavor: Labels that tout better taste entice consumers to eat healthier

03 Oct 2019 --- Labels with an emphasis on the taste of products may encourage consumers to make healthier choices to a higher degree than those with nutritional information. This is according to a new study from Stanford University, US, published in Psychological Science. Efforts to promote healthy eating by providing details on nutritional value have not drastically changed consumer habits, the study finds. However, evocative labels focusing on the flavorful taste of vegetables, such as “twisted citrus glazed carrots” and “ultimate chargrilled asparagus” can get people to choose and consume more vegetables.

“Taste-focused labeling works because it increases the expectation of a positive taste experience,” says Alia Crum, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford and the paper’s senior author. “In particular, references to ingredients such as garlic or ginger, preparation methods such as roasted, and words that highlight experiences such as “sizzling” or “tavern-style” help convey that the dish is not only tasty but also indulgent, comforting or nostalgic.”

Packaging is the last divide between consumer and product and can make or break purchasing decisions. On-pack claims have long been considered to be a marketing technique to persuade consumers to buy so there is potential for them to encourage healthier choices. Labels such as Nutriscore or the traffic light label have been implemented to educate consumers about how healthy a product is and its nutritional value. However, this research suggests that ultimately taste remains the most important factor when choosing what to consume.

Crum says that a claim such as “twisted citrus glazed carrots” works because it highlights the flavor.“This is radically different from our current cultural approach to healthy eating which, by focusing on health to the neglect of taste, inadvertently instills the mindset that healthy eating is tasteless and depriving,” says Crum. “Yet in retrospect, one ponders ‘why haven’t we been focusing on making healthy foods more delicious and indulgent all along?’”

The impact of flavor claims
Three years ago, Crum and her associates partnered with Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises to try out a new approach to encourage healthy eating. Culling adjectives that popular restaurants used to describe less healthy foods, they came up with a system for naming vegetables that focused on the flavors in vegetable dishes. They also added words that created the expectation of a positive eating experience – hence “twisted citrus glazed carrots.” That study, published in 2017, showed that decadent-sounding labels could get people to eat vegetables more often than they would if the vegetables had neutral or health-focused names.

The team has now extended those findings by repeating the experiment at additional university dining halls around the US. In collaboration with the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative – a nationwide network of 57 colleges and universities pioneering research to improve healthy and sustainable eating – the team tracked nearly 140,000 decisions about 71 vegetable dishes. These had been labeled with taste-focused, health-focused or neutral names.

The researchers found that diners put vegetables on their plates 29 percent more often when the food had taste-focused versus health-focused names and 14 percent more often when it had taste-focused versus neutral names. Diners also ate 39 percent more vegetables by weight, according to measurements of what they served themselves versus how much ended up in compost.

The team also found that giving vegetables taste-focused names only worked when those dishes were indeed delicious. At one school where diners thought the vegetable dishes, in general, weren't as tasty, labeling them using tasty descriptors had little impact.

Crum says that a claim such as “twisted citrus glazed carrots” works because it highlights the flavor, while “absolutely awesome zucchini” fails because it is too vague.

The researchers believe that the combination of research and tools that enable real-world change could have a broad impact on eating habits.The study is part of a broader project to make healthy foods more craveable and less like something that is tolerated due to health benefits. That effort also includes Stanford’s Social Psychological Answers to Real-world Questions (SPARQ)'s “Edgy Veggies” toolkit – a step-by-step guide for how to implement taste-focused labeling that draws on the team’s studies.

In the long run, the researchers believe that the combination of research and tools that enable real-world change could have a broad impact on eating habits.

“College students have among the lowest vegetable intake rates of all age groups,” says Brad Turnwald, a Psychology Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stanford, and study co-author. 

“Students are learning to make food decisions for the first time amid new stresses, environments and food options. It’s a critical window for establishing positive relationships with healthy eating,” Turnwald concludes.

Edited by Kristiana Lalou