Marketing and promoting healthy eating make it difficult to buy the right food
Until recently, no one understood what motivated people to choose certain foods, and marketers knew what consumers were buying, but not why. So scientists have studied shoppers' shopping strategies, hoping to use this information to help them make healthier choices.
If you imagine that a person is in his favorite supermarket, then when he stands in front of the cereal shelf, he can be overwhelmed by the number of alternatives: some products say they are “low-fat”, others say they are “all natural”, and The farm brand in the supermarket is next to the best brands you usually choose.
Until recently, no one knew what motivated purchasing decisions. That is why the University of Antwerp conducted a study in which they repeatedly asked people to choose between two goods and analyzed their decisions. It was found that there are three types of shoppers: the first group invariably chooses the healthiest product available, the second group always chooses their favorite brand, and the third group purposefully chooses the least healthy product.
The decisions of this particular group may seem strange, but their reasoning is based on the intuitive understanding that “healthy foods cannot be tasty.” The fact is that there is currently a heated debate in the European Union about whether food labeling should be made mandatory across Europe. At the same time, a significant portion of buyers believe that healthy products have an unpleasant taste.
During the study, scientists were most interested in the effect of a new brand called Nutri-Score. It was developed to help people make food choices and is now preparing to become an official European brand. The label may not tell you anything about the price of the product, but at least the person knows what he is paying for: it informs about the usefulness of this product.
Nutri-Score was developed by scientists. It took them four years of collaboration, development, calculations, testing and refinement to create this brand, which is still regularly evaluated and updated. There is no “health promotion” for the sake of selling a product. The Nutri-Score label assigns scores based on the relative healthfulness of a product. The best nutritional rating is an A, and the worst is an E.
Before checking the Nutri-Score, you will have to turn each yogurt over and look at the numbers and terms on the back of each package. The scientists also created a nutrient score to evaluate comparable options within the same food category.
Scientists emphasize that the Nutri-Score is not a marketing scam and can be a very effective tool if used within a specific food category .
Everyone makes purchases based on their personal priorities and what shoppers think they know about products. Unfortunately, marketing, existing beliefs and “intuition”, no matter how reasonable they may seem, can lead astray. Researchers are working hard to provide everyone with easy-to-understand information about the foods on supermarket shelves so everyone can make informed decisions about what foods they buy and improve their health in the process!