Practicing the (un)healthy = tasty intuition: Toward an ecological view of the relationship between health and taste in consumer judgments

• Published in: Food quality and preference 2019-07, Vol.75, p.39-53
• Main Authors: Haasova, Simona, Florack, Arnd
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Consumer judgments; Ecological validity; Food products; Healthiness; Product packaging; Tastiness
• ISSN: 0950-3293; 1873-6343
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2019.01.024

•Unhealthy = tasty intuition is not generally used on diverse and familiar products.•Consumers positively associate healthiness and tastiness in real food products.•This finding is stable across random product selections, product types, countries.•The magnitude and valence of this association depends on individual differences. Recent research has provided some first indications that not all consumers apply an unhealthy = more tasty heuristic when judging the healthiness and tastiness of food products. To address the question of whether and when consumers perceive food in accordance with unhealthy = tasty or healthy = tasty views, we conducted two studies in two European countries with consumers who were stratified along important demographic characteristics. In both studies, we presented participants with a random sample of real food products from two product categories available at a large supermarket chain. We hypothesized a positive relationship between subjective healthiness and tastiness judgments, which we assume has its bases in an evolutionary mechanism, personal consumption experiences and consumption trends. Our results consistently revealed the expected positive association between subjective healthiness and tastiness judgments across participants, countries, and products. However, the magnitude and valence of this relationship varied across product categories and depended on differences in the extents to which consumers believed in the unhealthy = tasty intuition, were interested in health, and exhibited a food pleasure orientation.