A nudge in the right direction: the role of food choice architecture in changing populations' diets

Abstract

Populations' diets typically fall short of recommendations. The implication of this on ill health and quality of life is well established, as are the subsequent health care costs. An area of growing interest within public health nutrition is food choice architecture; how a food choice is framed and its influence on subsequent food selection. In particular, there is an appeal to manipulating the choice architecture in order to nudge individuals' food choice. This review outlines the current understanding of food choice architecture, theoretical background to nudging and the evidence on the effectiveness of nudge strategies, as well as their design and implementation. Interventions emphasising the role of nudge strategies have investigated changes to the accessibility, availability and presentation of food and the use of prompts. Empirical studies have been conducted in laboratories, online and in real-world food settings, and with different populations. Evidence on the effectiveness of nudge strategies in shifting food choice is encouraging. Underpinning mechanisms, not yet fully explicated, are proposed to relate to salience, social norms and the principle of least effort. Emerging evidence points to areas for development including the effectiveness of choice architecture interventions with different and diverse populations, and the combined effect of multiple nudges. This, alongside further examination of theoretical mechanisms and guidance to engage and inspire across the breadth of food provision, is critical. In this way, the potential of choice architecture to effect meaningful change in populations' diets will be realised.

Social Contagion in Veganville

“…Nudging is a method of moving consumer habits towards an objective for the common good, such as decarbonising the food system. In the vegan social contagion case, consumers could be nudged towards purchasing items that substitute animal-based products (Morren et al, 2021), such as communicating through environmental product declarations on food packaging (Vandenbroele et al, 2020) and re-articulating official public dietary advice (Ensaff, 2021). This would have an impact on education leading to shifts in norms and values (Hansen et al, 2021) which would in turn reinforce policies and governance (Otto, 2020).…”

Choice Architecture Cueing to Healthier Dietary Choices and Physical Activity at the Workplace: Implementation and Feasibility Evaluation

“…Besides being effortless, choice architecture interventions are considered relatively inexpensive [ 6 , 20 ]. Our findings support this assumption in that the delivery of nearly all implemented strategies and the majority of strategies in the toolkit require no or minor purchases.…”

“…In practice, nudges attempt to influence behaviour by modifying the surrounding choice architecture—i.e., the way that available choice options are presented in decision-making contexts—in ways that work independently of limiting the freedom of choice, substantially changing incentives, or relying on education [ 18 , 19 ]. Nudges typically work by reducing effort and cognitive load, increasing salience and attractiveness, or leveraging social norms [ 20 ]. Over a decade of intensive research [ 21 ], choice architecture interventions have proved effective in guiding food choices, for example, by altering food availability, position, order, and portion size [ 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ], as well as by prompting healthier choices at the point of choice [ 26 , 27 ].…”

“…Implementing choice architecture interventions is considered less resource-intensive compared to individual-level interventions [ 20 , 30 ]. Hence, scaling up to population level could be feasible [ 31 ].…”

“…By contrast, in food service settings, scaling up a default type “dish of the day” strategy for promoting plant-based meals appeared challenging and yielded mixed results that depended on the context and target population [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. However, overall evidence remains scarce on the implementation and feasibility of choice architecture interventions in real-world settings [ 20 , 38 ], including workplaces [ 39 , 40 ].…”