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).

My Top 3 of free apps that support you in sticking to your goals

We all know that it is very hard to stick to your goals. Here you find my Top 3 of free apps that help you stick to your New Year's resolutions.

1) The Eatery: Build on the honest real-time feedback of friends and strangers

My favorite one! Self-monitoring improves self-awareness of behaviour ('Am I really eating that much chocolate?'), but writing down everything you eat can also be quite boring and time-consuming. The Eatery promotes its free app with the slogan 'stop counting calories, start eating better'.

The idea is that you take a picture of everything that you plan to eat. Then you invite your friends to comment on the meals you are about to eat or just finished. Within a few minutes you will then receive a rating on a scale of 1 (very unhealthy) till 100 (extremely healthy). As you can see, my homemade oliebollen (Dutch treat) were not considered to be very healthy. I did not connect to Facebook, but still I received about 20 ratings per snapped food. So, by using crowdsourcing, other people evaluate the healthiness of your eating habits. 

This app is addictive and fun to do! However, I do not always agree with the crowd's healthiness ratings. I noticed that the crowd is also susceptible to biases such as health halos and the negative calorie illusion. Just put a salad next to your burger or state that it is fat-free, and the ratings go up substantially. And although you can indicate the portion size consumed, I have the impression that you do not include that information in your ratings of other people's food. But the idea is great and offers opportunities for interesting consumer studies.

2) Stickk: Make yourself accountable; pay when you do not reach your goals

Stickk is not an app, but a site that claims that your chances of success are higher when you put actual money on your goal. It is not obligatory, but you have the option to commit money to your goal and if you do not achieve it, Stickk will send the money to the person, charity or organisation that you indicated. The site is founded by Yale economists and based on two key principles of behavioural economics: (1) people do not always follow up what they intend to do and (2) incentives motivate people to do things. I did not commit money to my goal, so I guess that is the reason that it was not that motivating. I think I am going to commit myself again, but then with serious money....

3) My Weight App and MyNetDairy: track your weight loss progress
A recent study of Barbara Cunningham showed that people do not lose more weight when they track their diet using smart phones compared to the traditional pen and paper method. But still, if you have a smartphone, it is convenient to try an app.

These apps help you to track you weight day by day (My Weight App) and calories/exercise (MyNetDiary). I used the free versions, and they are easy to use. The progress bar of the My Weight app gives a view on how far you progressed with your weight loss.

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.

The Negative Calorie Illusion - Do your calories also magically disappear from your plate?

A noteworthy study of Alexander Chernev in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (April 2011 issue) showed that people have misguided beliefs about the relationship between a meal healthiness and its impact on weight gain. Simply said; they believe that adding a healthy item (such as an apple or salad) to a meal magically decreases the number of calories in a meal.

The reason is that people tend to categorize foods as healty and unhealthy ones. Particularly dieters are more likely to believe in 'negative calories'.

This is not the first study on the so-called health halos. Health halos are associations that people have with certain foods or restaurants. Brian Wansink and Pierre Chandon found that there's a health halo around foods at restaurants like Subway that leads people to overeat on side dishes and grossly underestimate the number of calories they consume. Even organic foods have a health halo, as people believe they have fewer calories (according to a recent study of Schuldt and Schwarz).

Not so good news. At least, not for people who want to manage their weight and eat healthy. Good news for restaurants. Just simply add a salad to your meal or menu and everything looks more wholesome. Not surprising that most (fast food) restaurants already discovered this without doing any consumer research.

According to Chernev at his interesting blog: 'The focus of current public policy campaigns needs to shift away from the stereotypes associated with “good” and “bad” foods and toward the quantity of food consumed.'  I agree completely. And stop dieting: it poisons your mind with this kind of misbeliefs!