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Health Halos: How Nutrition Claims Influence Food Consumption for Overweight and Normal Weight People
Author(s) -
Wansink Brian,
Chandon Pierre
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.20.5.a1008-c
Subject(s) - overweight , consumption (sociology) , overeating , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , business , obesity , normal weight , health claims on food labels , public economics , environmental health , marketing , advertising , economics , medicine , food science , social science , chemistry , artificial intelligence , sociology , computer science
How do the nutrition claims on packaged goods influence how much a person eats? In an era of increasing obesity and increasing threats of legislation, regulation, and boycotts, this question is a concern both to responsible packaged goods companies and to regulatory agencies. To address this question, we develop and test a framework that shows how relative nutrition claims (such as “low‐fat”) can increase food intake by increasing perceptions of appropriate serving size and decreasing anticipation of consumption guilt. Three studies show that relative nutrition claims can lead all consumers to overeat, but this becomes more exaggerated for overweight consumers than those with a normal weight. Further results show that providing objective serving size information eliminates the overeating that is encouraged by low‐fat nutrition labels, but only among normal weight consumers. With consumer welfare and corporate profitability in mind, win‐win labeling insights are suggested for manufacturers and public policy officials.