Two experiments in Austria and Germany involving pictures of meals containing healthy and unhealthy foods indicated that people tend to believe that unhealthy foods taste better when there are more unhealthy food items available. This finding emerged despite the presentation of both healthy and unhealthy foods as equally tasty on average. The research was published in the journal Appetite.
Scientists often distinguish between healthy and unhealthy foods. Healthy foods are typically those that provide a substantial amount of essential nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, and healthy fats, relative to their calorie content. Examples include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and lean proteins. These foods are crucial for supporting body functions and promoting good health. They aid in maintaining weight and regulating metabolism. Research also links the consumption of these foods to a reduced risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Unhealthy foods, on the other hand, are often high in calories but low in nutritional value. These foods often contain excessive amounts of added sugars, unhealthy fats, and sodium. Common examples are processed snacks, sugary beverages, fast foods, and products with a high level of artificial additives. Frequent consumption of these foods is associated with various health issues, including obesity, heart disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes.
Despite these health implications, unhealthy foods are typically engineered to be highly palatable, incorporating various additives specifically to enhance their taste. Numerous studies have confirmed that people generally believe unhealthy foods taste better than healthy ones. It is possible that people perceive a trade-off between health and taste, leading them to assume that healthier options are less flavorful.
The study’s lead researcher, Sonja Kunz, along with her team, sought to investigate whether individuals develop misconceptions about the relationship between healthiness and tastiness based on a single context or through comparison across different scenarios.
“According to widespread lay belief, people think healthy food cannot be tasty, which is puzzling because there are many healthy and tasty food options,” explained Kunz, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Vienna. “We wanted to better understand why people still form this negative views about healthy foods. This would help us to encourage people to eat healthy without the feeling that they need to sacrifice taste.”
The researchers theorized that the belief that “unhealthy equals tasty” emerges primarily in situations where individuals frequently encounter tasty yet unhealthy foods. To explore this hypothesis, they conducted two experiments—one in a lab and another online.
The first experiment involved 114 undergraduate psychology students from the University of Vienna and 21 volunteers, all native German speakers and not dieting at the time. Participants were asked to imagine sampling food from a newly opened restaurant. They viewed images of purported meals from this restaurant, each accompanied by ratings of the meal’s taste and health.
After reviewing all the meals, participants were asked to assess the overall healthiness and tastiness of the foods offered at the restaurant. They also shared their beliefs about the relationship between health and taste at the restaurant, their general beliefs on this topic, and their interest in health.
Not all participants viewed the same meals. They were randomly divided into three groups: the first group saw predominantly tasty and healthy foods, the second group mainly saw unhealthy and tasty foods, and the third group viewed an equal number of tasty and non-tasty foods, as well as healthy and unhealthy foods.
The results from the first experiment indicated that participants developed a stronger association between unhealthy foods and tastiness when they were presented with more unhealthy and tasty foods compared to when they saw healthy and tasty foods.
The second experiment was conducted online with 209 participants recruited through the TALK online access panel to represent the German population by age, gender, and region. The average age of the participants was 45 years, and 49% were female. The setup was similar to the first experiment, but instead of a restaurant, participants imagined they were choosing food from a new delivery app called “Eats.” Additionally, instead of general health and taste beliefs, the researchers measured participants’ Protestant ethic.
The Protestant ethic is a concept referring to an individual’s commitment to diligence, discipline, and strong responsibility, often related to their moral and ethical stance on work. Someone with a strong Protestant ethic exhibits a high level of dedication to hard work and ethical behavior in both their professional and personal lives.
The findings of the second experiment supported those of the first. The negative association between health and taste was stronger when participants viewed more unhealthy and tasty foods than when they saw more healthy and tasty foods. Participants with a stronger Protestant ethic were slightly more inclined to believe that healthy foods taste better. But the findings held even after controlling for Protestant ethic.
“The main takeaway is that food environments with many unhealthy foods can create illusions that unhealthy food is tastier, although this might be wrong. Therefore, policy makers should create food environments with many (not just some) healthy food options,” Kunz told PsyPost.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the way individuals form beliefs about food qualities. However, it also has limitations that need to be taken into account. Notably, the experiments only involved pictures of food and presented data about health and tastiness through star ratings. This is probably quite different from the way people form impressions about food in real life where the actual taste and smell of food play the key role.
“We manipulated how many foods were healthy and tasty in the presented environments, but we do not know how (un)healthy and tasty foods are distributed in real-life environments,” Kunz noted. “Also, we presented participants with pictures of foods and told them whether they were healthy and tasty, but we do not know whether participants trusted this information and how they themselves would evaluate the foods.”
“We want to better understand how people form beliefs about food, specifically the relationship between health and taste and how to change them to help people eat healthier. Ideally, this means using the approach in the study to design interventions in which food environments are changed to help consumers form positive views about healthy eating.”
The paper, “Seeing is misbelieving: Consumers wrongly believe that unhealthy food tastes better when there is more of it,” was authored by Sonja Kunz, Niklas Pivecka, Clara Dietachmair, and Arnd Florack.