‘Food Nudging’ Can Help People to Eat Healthier, Claims Report

Nudging or "choice architecture" refers to strategic changes in the environment that are anticipated to alter people's behaviour in a predictable way, without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. However, until now the scientific evidence of nudging towards healthier eating has been scarce.

"The food service operators and the retail sector have been using the principles of nudging to push its products to the consumers, for example, placing specific products at adult's eye level, while other products are left at children's eye level,” explained Associate Professor Federico J. A. Perez-Cueto from the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, “The question is whether we can also use this simple and low-cost method to move people's food behaviour in a more healthy direction, or to facilitate the choice of healthier options."

 

"The review confirmed our expectation that there are very few scientific works available which deal with nudging healthier food choices by changes in the position of the food offers,” Perez-Cueto continued, “We corroborated that changing the organization of buffets, supermarkets and the other environments where people come across food can contribute to people eating more healthily."

 

Based on these results, food nudging in canteens is expected to be one of the hot topics when it comes to interventions aimed at promoting healthy eating habits.

 

Perez-Cueto said: "There is already some activity in the area, and changing eating towards healthier behaviour is going to be the challenge for the next couple of years. Together with the big retail companies and the food industry such as canteens, we will have to think about whether the focus is just to keep business as usual - or if it is also about keeping the population healthy, and preserving the environment."

 

He states however that nudging is just one tool in the box. "If you want people to eat enough vegetables, it is not the only thing to do, there is need for policies, recommendations, voluntary agreements, information campaigns, but nudging can contribute, and we think the contribution can be substantial," he said.

 

The review also concludes that there is a need for high-quality studies that quantify the magnitude of positional effects on food choice in conjunction with measuring the impact on food intake, particularly in the longer term.

 

Future studies should use outcome measures such as change in quantities of food consumed or energy intake to quantify the impact on dietary intake and the potential impact on nutrition-related health.