Snacking: what to do with the fourth meal of the day?

Snacking now constitutes 25% of calories consumed in the US, according to a study that was presented at the Institute of Food Technology meeting last month. This is about 580 calories per day, about the same size as a meal, according to professor Richard Mattes of Purdue University.

Why? There are more situations in which we are confronted with tempting food. Our internal hunger and satiety signals are weak, particularly when looking at large assortments of delicious treats. Refusing would require quite some self-control. What does not help, is that self-control is like a muscle in your arm, according to the well-known psychologist Roy Baumeister and his 'self-control-as-a-muscle-theory'. When used too intensively, it gets tired and is more likely to fail. Baumeister came up with the term 'ego depletion' to indicate that self-control is a limited resource. So the more you try to not give in to temptations the more likely you are to go for the 'forbidden' food in the end. Coupled with increased snack portion sizes available, it is not surprising that people get overweight. I guess there are two basic solutions: don't snack or snack smarter.

1)      Just do not snack 
When I was at Cornell last year, Jan Chozen Bays gave a very inspirational workshop about mindful eating. Mindful eating is paying full attention to eating without negative judgments. It is about being aware of physical and emotional sensations when eating. What struck me most during this workshop is that she said that we could learn to accept an empty stomach. It does not need to be filled immediately. Like Buddha, listening to the ebb and flow of hunger and desire, she explained. We are not used to that anymore, conditioned that we should not accept that nagging hungry feeling in our stomach. This reminded me of an old Dutch commercial with the slogan: 'Four o'clock: cup-a-soup, more people should do that'. Mindful eaters, however, do not look at the clock to decide what and when to eat, but listen closely to what their body is saying. Unfortunately, I still not that far in mastering the art of mindful eating...

Accept the 'four o'clock' feeling without snacking? (Still Cup a Soup commercial 1990s)

2)      Smart snacking: cut up your food 

You could switch to healthier foods, such as fruits. Another solution and probably more realistic for many of us is to cut up your food into smaller portions (maybe an interesting nudge?). David Marchiori and colleagues (see Journal of the American Dietetic Association) gave a group of study participants unlimited consumption from a bowl of candies. About half of the participants received candies that were cut in two pieces and the other half got the normal sized candies. Participants with the tiny candies ate about half compared to the other group. Although this was only a 60 calories difference, it showed that consumers typically view their consumption in numbers ('oh, I already had 5 candies) rather than quantities ('e.g. a handful). 

A related idea is to package your snacks in small-sized portions. A recent study of the Food and Brand lab gave one group of participants one large 400-calorie package of crackers and another group four smaller 100-calorie packs of the same crackers to eat during a television show. Results show that only overweight participants consumed more than double the number of calories when eating from the bigger package (384 calories versus 176 calories). Interestingly, all participants underestimated the number of crackers eaten. So, it is not the tracking of calories that is easier with a smaller package. Apparently, overweight people are more likely to rely on external cues (such as the need to open a new package) to stop eating, according to Wansink and colleagues.

Consortium starts research to promote sustainable and healthy foods

This morning, the press release about the start of our consortium went out! It is a very interesting and exciting nudging project (see a previous blog post about nudging).

This is the English brief version of the press release:

Many consumers support the importance of sustainability and health. Could you help these consumers in making the right choice by changing the shelf lay-out of sustainable products in supermarkets? Or by including healthy food products in the default options of restaurant menus? A consortium consisting of Wageningen University, Schuttelaar & Partners and other parties started with a study on nudging. This entails ways to nudge consumers into choosing sustainable and healthy products without limiting the freedom to choose. The project is commissioned by the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation (EL&I).

For the interested Dutch readers, here is the complete press release in Dutch:

PERSBERICHT

Consortium start met onderzoek naar het bevorderen van duurzaam en gezond voedsel.

Consumenten geven massaal aan duurzaamheid en gezondheid belangrijk vinden. Kun je deze consumenten helpen door bijvoorbeeld duurzame producten een prominentere plek te geven in de supermarktschappen? Of door gezondere producten op te nemen in de standaardmenu’s van een restaurant? In opdracht van het ministerie van Economische Zaken, Landbouw en Innovatie (EL&I) is een consortium gestart met onderzoek naar nudging. Dit zijn manieren om consumenten een duwtje – een ‘nudge’ – in de goede richting te geven bij kiezen voor duurzame en gezonde producten, zonder hierbij de keuzevrijheid te beperken.

Consortium
Het consortium dat het onderzoek gaat uitvoeren bestaat uit Wageningen Universiteit, Schuttelaar & Partners, HAS KennisTransfer en het Restaurant van de Toekomst. Andere partijen die hun medewerking aan het onderzoek verlenen zijn PLUS supermarkten, Servex, het Jeroen Bosch ziekenhuis, Ziekenhuis Gelderse Vallei, Stichting Max Havelaar en Stichting Ik Kies Bewust.

Onderzoek
Het onderzoek richt zich op mogelijke nudges om de consument te ondersteunen bij de keuze voor duurzame en gezonde producten. Dit gebeurt door middel van kleine veranderingen in de context, bijvoorbeeld een andere inrichting van het supermarktschap. Een ander voorbeeld is het laten zien van het percentage consumenten dat al heeft gekozen voor een bepaald product. Consumenten die duurzaamheid en gezondheid wel belangrijk vinden kiezen nog niet altijd voor deze producten. Het onderzoek richt zich specifiek op deze groep consumenten. Behalve onderzoek naar de effectiviteit van de nudges zal ook de ethische aanvaardbaarheid van de interventies worden beoordeeld.

Implementatie
Naast de wetenschappelijke onderbouwing richt het project zich vooral ook op de praktische uitvoerbaardheid. Om te kijken of de nudges daadwerkelijk werken in de praktijk zal onderzoek worden gedaan in onder andere een virtuele supermarkt en in verschillende real-life situaties, zoals bedrijfsrestaurants, zorginstellingen, stationskiosken en supermarkten.

Resultaten
Het onderzoek zal een beeld geven van nudges die effectief en ethisch aanvaardbaar zijn bij het stimuleren van de keuze voor gezond en duurzaam voedsel. Deze resultaten kunnen van belang zijn voor zowel overheidsbeleid als voor marktpartijen. Het project loopt tot eind 2012 en de eerste resultaten worden verwacht in het najaar van 2011.



Can we nudge consumers towards healthier choices by changing the way we organize supermarket shelves?



The six reasons why overweight is a wicked problem

No quick fixes and simple solutions. That is the case with the current overweight and obesity epidemic. You can read this important message in the recently published book 'Tegenwicht. Feiten en fabels over overgewicht', written by Jaap Seidell and Jutka Halbertstadt. The translation of this Dutch title would be something like 'Counterweight. Facts and myths about overweight'.

I really liked reading this book, because it describes in easy-to-read and understandable language the current state of the scientific knowledge on overweight and obesity. What struck me most was that science has not yet come that far in understanding how various factors interact in creating the overweight problem and providing effective solutions. A key reason for that, Seidell argues, is that overweight is a wicked problem. This term was first mentioned in relation to the highly complex problems of social planning, but it can also be applied to overweight and obesity.

Basically, there are six reasons why overweight is a wicked problem:

Reason 1: You know what the problem is, when you have the solution. Since it is hard to define what exactly the problem is, it is difficult to find a solution. This definitely applies to overweight. For example, experts often disagree what the major causes are of overweight: lack of physical activity or overeating? Bad genes or bad eating habits?

Reason 2: The solution process does not have a clear end-point. As Seidell wonders; it is not exactly clear what the purpose is of preventing overweight: halting the rising trends or reducing the number of people with overweight to zero?

Reason 3: Solutions are not right or wrong. All involved stakeholders (such as food companies, authorities, consumers, health professionals) have an opinion about the problem and often disagree. For example, last week we had the No Diet Day (or 'Anti-Diet-day' in the Netherlands). Although the day aims at body weight acceptance, it led to debates about the usefulness of particular diets and the risks of overweight. 

Reason 4: Each wicked problem is unique and new. The involved actors and concrete situations are different. The causes and potential solutions are similarly not the same for different groups of overweight individuals.

Reason 5:  There is no room to experiment. It is impossible to check beforehand whether a particular solution will be effective. Essentially, it is often a matter of critically informed trial and error.

Reason 6: There is no clear set of solutions and there can be many solutions or only one. Solutions are hard to find. As a result, Seidell argues that the overweight and obesity problem requires a holistic solution. For example, schools, food industry, health authorities and consumers should work together in exploring solutions that seem promising. After all, there is a lot at stake: overweight is not just a medical problem, but also a social one. 

Trish Groves likewise argues in the British Medical Journal that obesity seems to be the classic example of a wicked problem. Consequently, we need more innovative and collaborative approaches. I completely agree. Acknowledging that overweight is a wicked problem might help getting a more realistic overview of the problem instead of over-simplistic and one-sided analyses and claims for solutions. It also shows that as researchers we should look across the boundaries of traditional research fields and become more creative in contributing to the search for solutions.

Nudging consumers to eat healthier: guidance without being told how to live

Nudging consumers towards healthier choices has been a hot topic for some time. Nudges are simple, low-cost interventions to move consumers towards healthier choices without banning food products or telling them how to live. There is a lot of attention for nudging since Thaler and Sunstein published their influential book 'Nudge' in 2008. The authors explain how to subtly redesign choice environments (such as canteens, stores), the so-called 'choice architecture', in such a way that consumers are gently pushed in a more responsible direction without limiting their freedom of choice. The concept is based on behavioural economics and psychological theories on how people are biased in their decision making. People tend to act automatically, often triggered by the environment. Despite knowing we should eat more fruit, we tend to buy a chocolate bar while waiting in line for the checkout. By redesigning the choice context, we can be nudged into buying something more healthful. For example David Just and Brian Wansink illustrate how simply moving the salad bar to a more central position in the school lunch room led to increased sales of salads.

Not everyone is enthusiastic and there is a growing debate about the value of nudging. The British Medical Journal recently published two papers that debated the question: 'Are nudges really an effective public health strategy to tackle obesity?'. Geof Rayner and Tim Lang worry that governments are only interested because of self-promotion motives. It also allows them to back away from taking strong (and often unpopular) actions, such as higher taxes and stricter regulation. In contrast, Adam Oliver believes that nudges may help people to make healthier choices. He argues that nudges should be seen as additional tools to move society in a more beneficial direction. In the Netherlands, Henriette Prast argued in the 'Groene Amsterdammer' that the private sector takes advantage of human weaknesses and that it is time for the government to develop some counterforce.

I believe that the concept of nudging is a refreshing way to look at creative, inexpensive and new ways to help consumers eat healthier. But indeed, evidence so far on how nudging helps improving food choices is limited, so more research is needed to understand whether they work and how exactly. And if nudges work, will they have a sustained impact on consumer behaviour?