ArticlePreventive medicine2019
Smart food policy for healthy food labeling: Leading with taste, not healthiness, to shift consumption and enjoyment of healthy foods.
Article in Preventive medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 28 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Higher education institutions and the use of marketing-mix choice architecture strategies to encourage plant-rich menu options and sustainable dietary patterns: a scoping review.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Pooled it
- Calorie (energy) labelling for changing selection and consumption of food or alcohol.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Increasing Vegetable Intake by Emphasizing Tasty and Enjoyable Attributes: A Randomized Controlled Multisite Intervention for Taste-Focused Labeling.Psychological science · 2019Trial
- Does Feeling Bad Lead to Eating Bad? How Emotion, Deliciousness (Mis)match, and Weight Status Alter Food Choice and ERPs.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A Cross-Sectional Investigation of Relationships between Food Pleasure and Worry, Eating Behaviors, and Cultural Attributes among Mexican American Adults.International journal of gastronomy and food science · 2026Article
- Novel insights and practical strategies for health professionals to improve the uptake of plant-based diets in people with chronic kidney disease.Kidney research and clinical practice · 2026Article
- Sustainable taste: a conceptual integration of sensory, sociocultural, and structural dimensions for interdisciplinary research and practice.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Ambivalence towards food, healthy eating and the role of self-compassion.British journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- How Can Communication about Plant-based Foods Support Sustainable Food System Transformation? Nine Recommendations for Government, Industry and Citizens.Current environmental health reports · 2025Review
- Polarizing Plates: Both Omnivores and Vegans Represent In-Group Foods With Eating Simulations.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2025Article
- Household barriers and facilitators to healthy eating in a U.S. census-representative sample of the general population and a low-income sample: a cross-sectional survey.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Substitution patterns and price response for plant-based meat alternatives.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- A randomized clinical trial testing digital mindset intervention for knee osteoarthritis pain and activity improvement.NPJ digital medicine · 2024Article
- The Return on Investment for the Prevention and Treatment of Childhood and Adolescent Overweight and Obesity in Beijing: A Modeling Study.Nutrients · 2024Article
- Article
- How can restaurants entice patrons to order environmentally sustainable dishes? Testing new approaches based on hedonic psychology and affective forecasting theory.Journal of sustainable tourism · 2024Article
- Perceptions of control over different causes of death and the accuracy of risk estimations.Zeitschrift fur Gesundheitswissenschaften = Journal of public health · 2023Article
- The unhealthy-tasty intuition in dining out situations: the role of health inferences and taste expectations.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Article
- Article
- "Unhealthy = Tasty": How Does It Affect Consumers' (Un)Healthy Food Expectations?Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Smart food policy models for improving dietary intake recommend tailoring interventions to people's food preferences. Yet, despite people citing tastiness as their leading concern when making food choices, healthy food labels overwhelmingly emphasize health attributes (e.g., low caloric content, reductions in fat or sugar) rather than tastiness. Here we compared the effects of this traditional health-focused labeling approach to a taste-focused labeling approach on adults' selection and enjoyment of healthy foods. Four field studies (total N = 4273) across several dining settings in northern California in 2016-2017 tested whether changing healthy food labels to emphasize taste and satisfaction rather than nutritional properties would encourage more people to choose them (Studies 1-2), sustain healthy purchases over the long-term (Study 3), and improve both the perceived taste of and mindsets about healthy foods (Study 4). Compared to health-focused labeling, taste-focused labeling increased choice of vegetables (OR = 1.73, 95% CI: 1.32, 2.26), salads (OR = 2.06, 95% CI: 1.06, 4.06), and vegetable wraps (OR = 3.09, 95% CI: 1.73, 5.65) in Studies 1-2. In Study 3, taste-focused labeling sustained vegetarian entrée purchases over a two-month period, while health-focused labeling led to a 45.1% decrease. In Study 4, taste-focused labeling significantly enhanced post-consumption ratings of vegetable deliciousness and improved mindsets about the deliciousness of healthy foods compared to health-focused labeling. These studies demonstrate that taste-focused labeling is a low-cost strategy that increased healthy food selection by 38% and outperforms health-focused labeling on multiple smart food policy mechanisms.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.