Healthy-Left, Unhealthy-Right: Can Displaying Healthy Items to the Left (versus Right) of Unhealthy Items Nudge Healthier Choices?

Don't Count Calorie Labeling Out: Calorie Counts on the Left Side of Menu Items Lead to Lower Calorie Food Choices

“…Thus, if information to the right (vs. left) is naturally processed earlier, which is the case for Hebrew-speaking Israelis who read from right-to-left, our process explanation predicts that calorie information to the right (vs. left) should lead to lower calorie food orders. Such a finding would provide substantial support for our process explanation, while casting doubt on both novelty and mental congruency (Biswas & Romero, 2014;Romero & Biswas, 2016) alternative explanations. Specifically, it is unusual to see calorie information on menus/menu boards in Israel as of 2017 (World Cancer Research Fund International, 2017).…”

“…Likewise, consistent with our theorizing that the key consideration is when calories are processed in the food decision-making process, any factor that leads consumers to process calorie information sooner (e.g., making calorie information more salient on the menu, regardless of its placement) will likely lead to lower calorie food orders, whereas any factor that causes calorie information to be processed later will likely lead to higher calorie orders. Moreover, previous research has identified other visual cues that lead consumers to make healthier choices, such as assigning letter grades and traffic light colors based on a food's nutritional content (Downs, Wisdom, & Loewenstein, 2015), ordering lower calorie items at the top of menu categories (Downs et al, 2015;Liu, Roberto, Liu, & Brownell, 2012) or at the top and bottom of menu categories (Dayan & Bar-Hillel, 2011), and positioning healthy food items to the left of unhealthy food items (Romero & Biswas, 2016). Future research could investigate the effect of pairing such interventions with the intervention identified herein.…”

Behavioural Insights and (Un)healthy Dietary Choices: a Review of Current Evidence

“…For example, it is still unclear whether putting healthy food in a better position or putting unhealthy food in a worse position creates the larger effects. That such nuanced differences might be important was demonstrated by a recent study showing that people systematically increased the choice of healthy foods when these foods were presented on the left side of an unhealthy choice, while a reversal of the positioning did not boost unhealthy choices (Romero and Biswas 2016).…”

Effects of awe on consumer preferences for healthy versus unhealthy food products

“…Effects of awe on consumer preferences for healthy versus unhealthy products were assessed by the percentage of fruit salad versus chocolate cake chosen in each condition. In line with prior research (Biswas, Szocs, Wansink, & Chacko, ; Romero & Biswas, ), since the independent variable (emotion, awe as 1 and neutral as 0) and dependent variable (taking value 1 if a consumer prefer/choose healthy products, i.e., fruit salad in this study, and 0 if a consumer prefer/choose unhealthy products, i.e., chocolate cake in this study) are both dichotomous indicators, we adopted chi‐square test ( χ 2 test) to determine whether there is a significant difference between the number of participants choosing healthy products in the awe condition and that in the neutral condition. Participants in the awe condition (64.2%) chose the healthy product (fruit salad) more frequently than participants in the neutral condition (47.1%), whereas fewer participants in the awe condition (35.8%) favored the unhealthy product (chocolate cake) than in the neutral condition (52.9%; Figure ), χ 2 (1) = 4.02, p = .045, φ = .17; odds ratio (OR) = 2.01.…”

“…For instance, Chobani and Cheerios include awe‐eliciting elements in their commercials to promote healthy food items (yogurt and cereal) while Stride and Pepsi have also used awe‐evoking appeals in their promotion of chewing gum and soda products, which are in general perceived as unhealthy items. Consistent with prior research, we define healthy products as those that contain less calories, more cognitive values, and lower taste pleasure, while unhealthy products are ones that have more affective values and higher taste pleasure (Chandon & Wansink, ; Raghunathan, Naylor, & Hoyer, ; Romero & Biswas, ; Shiv & Fedorikhin, ). It is noteworthy that, regardless of product type, firms evoke feelings of awe with the intention to generate favorable consumer outcomes.…”