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Thought for Food - A look at the psychology, culture and history of food as well as the latest information on nutrition.


Packaging Heuristics
Posted on 7/26/2005 in psychology

I know what you were thinking when you read my first post: a chef and a writer?  She must have been a psychology major in college!  And you’re right!  In addition to how our eyes work and the symptoms of bipolar disorder, I learned of the many ways in which marketing tricks us into often false beliefs about products; i.e. psychology knowledge used for evil instead of good. 

 

Here’s what happens: we’re bombarded by choices constantly, which is part of what makes America great; the downside is that we don’t have the time to sift through all of these choices – I mean, there are over 300 brands of cereal alone!  To make our lives easier, we use what psychologists call heuristics which are simple cues or rules for solving a problem.  Companies can then use these heuristics to encourage us to make assumptions, sometimes falsly, about their products.  For example, have you noticed that lower-fat foods, like Healthy Choice products, are often packaged in green?  That’s a heuristic: a mental cue that suggests that the product is a healthy one.  But let’s look again: regardless of packaging, can cookies ever be considered health food?

 

Back in 1981, Consumer Reports did a great study where they fed rats only water and one of 32 brands of cereal for 14 – 18 weeks.  Go ahead and place your bets on which cereals did the best: Corn Flakes?  Cheerios?  Shredded Wheat? Product 19?  Rats fed Cheerios, Grape-Nuts, Shredded Wheat and, get this, Life and Lucky Charms thrived while rats fed Corn Flakes, Product 19 and Quaker’s 100% Natural were malnourished and experienced stunted growth!  But Lucky Charms has a cartoon leprechaun on the box and Quaker’s 100% Natural is, well, natural!

 

What food packaging really tells us is who the target market is: Lucky Charms is targeted at kids so the box is bright and fun, while Quaker’s 100% is marketed to adults so it looks earthy and serious.  There is one packaging clue that does tell you how healthy the product is: the nutritional panel.   Take a look at it next time you’re shopping and pay special attention to the serving size; some companies sneak low fat and calories under unrealistic portions, like one slice of lunch meat.

 

Oh, by the way, just because the rats thrived on Lucky Charms doesn’t make it health food, no matter how cute those stale little marshmallows are!



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