Debunking fast food: How expectations shape our eating experiences

When I was at the Food and Brand lab at Cornell University, the crew of Penn and Teller (well-known US TV show) filmed a small-scale consumer experiment. They invited a food designer known for doing 'extreme makeovers' with fast food (see his blog 'Fancy Fast Food'). This designer changed the fast food bought at places like KFC, McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts into beautifully looking restaurant dishes.

Then the experiment started. Visitors of the lab were tricked into believing they were eating fancy restaurant food. As a result, the food was highly liked. 'It is something my grandma would make', one guy told. Then a second experiment started. Here, one group was correctly told that the salad they were served came from the fast food chain Taco Bells. Not surprisingly, the response was accordingly: 'Big, greasy and maybe not so healthy'. However, when exactly the same salad was presented as coming from the 'California Garden Cafe', people were much more enthusiastic ('It's good... it's light').

We like to believe that we are experts in recognizing excellent cooking. In reality, how we experience food is not only determined by the characteristics of the food itself, but at least as much by our expectations, desires and beliefs. If we think that a food or drink is going to taste good, we look for positive qualities that confirm that belief and justify our choice. This is related to the health halo effect, which refers to consumers' tendency to think that when a food possesses one desirable feature ('freshly made'), the food is automatically assumed to have more desirable features ('it tastes light'). A risky bias, which may lead to underestimating how many calories we actually eat.

Watch this video, it is really fun. By the way, I am not in the video, I was washing the dishes...

Wanting to eat healthier, but little healthy foods sold at McDonalds

Most fast food restaurants do not share their sales data of healthy foods, but that did not stop Lyndall Wellard and colleagues to find out how many healthy items are actually sold at the biggest fast food chain in the world. They observed what people bought at 20 McDonalds restaurants in Australia. Of the 1449 meal purchases observed, only 1% could be considered healthy, 65% were unhealthy and 34% were take-away (so impossible to determine whether food is healthy or not).

Only 1% of all meals eaten in the restaurant! That is not much... Why would you sell healthy foods in a restaurant when hardly anyone is buying it? As a service to the 1% die-hard dieters who really do not want burgers and fries? Or to create a healthier image which may lead to higher overall sales?

According to a survey among Americans, 47% said they wanted restaurants to offer healthier items like salads. Even 23% said they tend to order those foods. Apparently many consumers like to have these items on the menu. Maybe as a license to indulge? Research of Wilcox and colleagues already showed that adding a salad or fruit to the menu makes you more likely to order fries. And to make it worse: consumers also tend to believe that adding a healthy item to a meal magically decreases the number of calories of the total meal.

In my previous blog post, I discussed the essay of Marion Nestle and David Stuckler on the influence of large food companies on public health. They are right, healthier foods are inherently less profitable. At least when eating out, most consumers seem to just want to indulge (without feeling too guilty).

Dealing with Big Food: Slow public health response to large food companies' influence

Recently, the world population exceeded 7 billion people. One billion of them is hungry, while at the same time two billion are overweight. This shows we have a huge problem in meeting people's dietary needs. As what people eat is increasingly determined by a few multinational food and beverage companies, this month a new series of articles on the influence of these companies ('Big Food') will appear in PLOS Medicine Magazine. Highly recommendable!

David Stuckler and Marion Nestle start off with their essay on Big Food's problematic influence on the global food system. The authors cite research that shows that the ten largest food companies control over half of all food sales in the United States. Unfortunately, what they successfully sell consists primarily of processed foods enriched in sugar, salt and fat. Frequent consumption of these foods is associated with excess weight and chronic diseases.

The decades-long fight against tobacco has provided us with insights on typical tactics used by industry to undermine public health measures such as taxation and regulation, they state. Basically, that is because food companies aim to maximize profits and not health. They do not like interventions that threaten their profits.

Public health professionals are slow in responding to the threat of Big Food and the authors therefore urge for more strong and conscious choices about how to deal with Big Food's influence. Dealing with the food industry involves more than partnering or waiting for self-regulatory initiatives. It requires a critical approach, recognizing the conflicts of interests that play a key role.

Stuckler and Nestle conclude by stating 'without taking direct and concerted action to expose and regulate the vested interests of Big Food, epidemics of poverty, hunger, and obesity are likely to become more acute'.  A strong plea for action...

'Would you like to downsize your dish?' - An easy strategy to nudge consumers towards more sensible portion sizes

New nudging papers keep on appearing in the literature. I just read a very interesting nudge experiment conducted by Janet Schwartz, Jason Riis, Brian Elbel and Dan Ariely. It is inspired by the sentence 'Do you want to supersize your order?’ that you could have heard at McDonalds before negative publicity (including the movie ‘Supersize me’) made an end to this practice. Such a verbal prompt, however, is still being used at station kiosks (‘Do you want something to eat with your coffee?’) and some other shops.

The basic idea behind their experiment is to simply ask consumers at a fast food restaurant if they would like to downsize their side dish (with and without a small incentive). Usually, less than 1% of the customers at fast food restaurants request a smaller portion size. The intervention was successful: between 13 and 44% of the consumer accepted the offer, regardless of whether they were also offered a discount of 25 cents.The authors also compared this intervention with a calorie labelling intervention and showed that only the offer to downsize had a signficant effect on the number of calories consumers ate.

This example of verbal encouragement can give consumers just that little push to make a different choice and exercise self-control. Consumers are likely to give in to such little pushes because they implicitly think that saying ‘yes’ is an appropriate response. When you ask people for an active response (always respond verbally or in writing) they are more likely to respond positively than when you ask for a passive response (only respond in case of yes).

Taste beyond the basic senses: the role of expectations and cues in the environment ­

The Wikipedia page about taste discusses the basic senses like bitter, sweet and sourness and how these influence the sensation of food in the mouth. Fine with me, but don’t go entirely on the Wikipedia story, because you would miss out on many more fascinating aspects of taste. Taste is as much about the basic senses as it is about the expectations one has and whether or not these are confirmed. Expectations shape experiences. As this is true for almost all life events, it definitively plays a huge role in taste experiences.

To illustrate this, researchers Martin Yeomans and colleagues presented a group of consumers a smooth, non-sweet peach-coloured smoked-salmon ice-cream. Imagine how that looks like. Then they told about half of the group that it was ‘ice-cream’ and the other half were told it was a ‘frozen savoury mousse’. Not surprisingly, the first group rated their ice cream as disgusting and inedible. The ‘mousse’ group, however, found it quite okay and some even enjoyed it. This study shows that when there is a big ‘negative’ contrast between what you expect and what you actually get, disappointment follows.

This finding holds true as well for the promotion of food, as found in a recent study I conducted with Brian Wansink and Mitsuru Shimizu during my stay at the Food and Brand lab of Cornell University. In this study, we randomly assigned 68 college students to a supposed advertising study in which they had to watch a series of fast food and restaurant commercials or a series of commercials for products like car insurance and electronics. As the study happened to fall over lunch, participants got a free lunch as an incentive. Following commercials viewing, participants served themselves the meal and we secretly measured the amount of food they ate. The participants also filled out a questionnaire about how they rated and enjoyed the food. This is what we found: those who watched the food commercials felt hungrier but did not eat more than the other group. Watching food and restaurant commercials did, however, led to lower ratings of liking and enjoyment of the meal. Apparently, these participants were somewhat disillusioned of our ordinary pasta meal with the ‘I’m loving it’ song of the McDonalds ad still in their mind.

This clearly shows that we taste what we expect to taste. Usually, the difference between what we expect and what we get is not that extreme as in the examples above. For small differences, most consumers try to explain away these conflicting feelings or change their perception of the food they ate. In 1950s, Leon Festinger introduced the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ for this phenomenon. Basically, if we think that a food is going to taste good, we look for positive qualities that confirm that belief and justify our choice.

Noteworthy as well are the positive halo effects which refer to consumers’ tendency to think that when a food possesses one desirable feature, the food is automatically assumed to have more desirable features as well. A specific ingredient claim (‘80% less fat’) or a suggestive menu label (‘Grandmothers apple pie’) can provide strong cues that bias taste evaluation. In his book Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink vividly explains a variety of research findings of such biases. For example, consumers liked ‘Belgian Black Forest Double Chocolate Cake’ better than ‘Chocolate Cake’, even if they are the same, old cake. Another finding was that consumer evaluated brownies on China plates as excellent, while identical brownies presented on paper plates were good and the same ones handed out on napkins are only ok.



Do McDonalds fruit wall posters enhance the taste and health experience of a milkshake?

Consumers often think that ‘tasty’ equals ‘unhealthy’. Indicating foods as healthy reduces consumers’ taste expectations and taste experience. In other words, if we are really enjoying it, it must be bad for us. This is the persistent 'unhealthy=untasty' intuition that consumers use. So, promoting the healthiness of a food may ironically decrease its attractiveness in terms of taste. However, it does not mean that consumers will restrain from eating it. In contrast: several studies have shown that putting a healthy label on a food gives a ‘license to sin’. For example, labeling snacks as ‘low fat’ increases food intake during a single consumption occasion by up to 50%. Unluckily, in the study this was particularly the case for overweight people. This is because labeling food as ‘healthy’ or ‘low fat’ makes consumers underestimate the calories and gives them a reason to reward themselves by overeating or indulging in other foods. This effect is called a health halo and consumers are generally unaware that claims such as ‘healthy’, ‘natural’, and even ‘organic’ serve as a green light to go ahead and indulge.   

All things considered, taste expectations are strongly influenced by cues in our purchase and eating environment.