See the Seal? Understanding Restrained Eaters’ Responses to Nutritional Messages on Food Packaging

Abstract

Food packaging in general and packaging incorporating health messages in particular have been active areas of inquiry, receiving attention from policymakers and food manufacturers alike. This study explores the effects of package seals and claims on perceived product healthfulness as a function of dietary restraint status. A laboratory experiment using realistic three-dimensional packaging shows that for restrained eaters (i.e., those who try to restrict their food intake), nutrition claims on "healthy" products and nutrition seals on "unhealthy" products are effective at enhancing perceptions of product healthfulness. Unrestrained eaters, in contrast, are largely unaffected by nutrition seals and claims. These results provide insights into restrained eaters' purchase motivations, as well as guidance for policymakers seeking to regulate the use of seals and claims.

Restrained Eating and Food Cues: Recent Findings and Conclusions

“…However, the amount eaten was not affected by these labels, so the data do not replicate Provencher, Polivy, and Herman's [10] finding that healthy labels led restrained eaters to eat more cookies. A later study replicated the effects of package labels and nutritional claims on the perceived healthfulness of the food for restrained eaters but not unrestrained eaters (although food intake was not measured) [11]. Similarly, giving brand and caloric/energy information affected how the cookies tasted to both restrained and unrestrained eaters [12], but restrained eaters ate more cookies from the healthy than the unhealthy brand unless the unhealthy ones were said to have fewer calories (lower energy density), in which case restrained eaters increased their consumption of those.…”

Toward Healthier Cookie Habits: Assessing the Role of Packaging Visual Appearance in the Expectations for Dietary Cookies in Digital Environments

“…However, after running such analyses, no remarkable differences in the data were observed suggesting that such contrast in consumption habits triggered robust differences across the obtained results (cf. Lwin et al, 2014). Such null effects may also be related to the split of the sample and, hence, a consequent underpowered analysis.…”

“…Concerning verbal typologies, several studies have verified how particular sensory aspects of products, which may also be related to healthiness, can be influenced by messages present on food/beverage packaging (e.g., Tuorilla and Cardello, 2002;Verbeke et al, 2009;Carrillo et al, 2012;Lwin et al, 2014;Miraballes et al, 2014;Pinto et al, 2017;Steinhauser and Hamm, 2018;Steinhauser et al, 2019). Carrillo et al (2012), for instance, studied consumers' perceptions of low-calorie cookies packaging, alternating tasting/non-tasting sessions with presence vs. absence of information on packaging.…”

“…The latter findings suggest that packaging attributes, along with price/flavor/health information, can influence consumers in their choice to purchase a snack bar, while also having a positive impact on consumers' product acceptance. Efficacy on health claims have also been analyzed by Lwin et al (2014). Their study shed light on the apparent low-impact of nutritional claims on unrestrained eaters, which contrasted with restrained eaters, whose opinion on not-so-healthy food improved when the corresponding package contained information relative to healthiness.…”

How Does Packaging Influence Consumer Behavior? A Multidisciplinary Bibliometric Study

“…As discussed below, this reveals the field to be multidisciplinary and relates the importance of packaging to several specific themes. In the cluster -diet‖, Lwin et al (2013) explored the effects of package labelling that identifies the health risks of consuming certain foods and indicated that nutrition labels have little effect on people who eat wantonly. And in the cluster -FSANZ‖, an article by Williams et al (2003) aimed to describe the use of nutrition information on packaging and measured how this information followed regulatory standards.…”