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Unhealthy food is not tastier for everybody: The “healthy = tasty” French intuition
Food Quality and Preference 28 (2013) 116–121
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Short Communication
Unhealthy food is not tastier for everybody: The ‘‘healthy = tasty’’ French intuition Carolina O.C. Werle a,b,⇑, Olivier Trendel a, Gauthier Ardito a a b
Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12 rue Pierre Sémard BP 127, 38003 Cedex 01, France CERAG, 150 rue de la chimie BP 47, 38040 Cedex 9, Grenoble, France
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 5 April 2012 Received in revised form 23 July 2012 Accepted 24 July 2012 Available online 3 August 2012 Keywords: Implicit associations Food perception Health Obesity Cross-cultural differences Taste
a b s t r a c t Previous research demonstrated that, for US-Americans, unhealthy food is implicitly associated to tastiness. Based on intercultural differences in food perception between France and USA, our objective is to verify if such differences impact food-related implicit associations, taste evaluations, and food consumption. Our first study demonstrates that the opposite intuition exists in France: unhealthy food is spontaneously associated with bad taste, while healthy food is linked to tastiness. Our second study investigates how the healthy = tasty French intuition influences taste perceptions in a product test conducted in an experimental lab. Results indicate that a neutral food described as healthy is considered tastier, more pleasurable and of better quality than when it is described as unhealthy. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Obesity is a major predicament of the contemporary Western world. Today, 34% of adults in the United States (Leavitt, 2008) and 14.5% of them in France (Obépi, 2009) are obese. The increase in obesity rates is mostly due to changes in lifestyle habits. Over the past century, life in most developed countries has evolved to become increasingly comfortable and highly caloric food is largely and readily available and tends to be overconsumed. One recent research suggests that one factor explaining the preference for highly caloric food is the unhealthy = tasty intuition: according to Raghunathan, Naylor, and Hoyer (2006) American consumers tend to overconsume foods perceived as unhealthy because they spontaneously and sometimes unconsciously consider that such food tastes better than healthy food. Indeed, even American consumers that explicitly report (i.e., in a questionnaire) that there is no link between level of food healthiness and tastiness were actually found to implicitly believe in the unhealthy = tasty intuition. However, the assumption that unhealthy food tastes better may be only true for US-American consumers though. Based on literature suggesting strong intercultural differences in food perceptions (Fischler & Masson, 2008; Rozin, Fischler, Imada, Sarubin, & ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Marketing, Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12 rue Pierre Sémard BP 127, 38003 cedex 01, France. Tel.: +33 (0) 476706544; fax: +33 (0) 476706138. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.O.C. Werle). 0950-3293/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2012.07.007
Wrzesniewski, 1999), our objective is to investigate whether this unhealthy = tasty intuition exists in France and how it influences the food perceptions and eating behaviors. In this research we consider unhealthy foods to be highly caloric or fatty foods. There is a substantial overlap between these concepts: in general unhealthy foods are considered as both highly caloric and rich in fat (Oakes, 2005). Highly caloric foods are also considered as dietary forbidden (Knight & Boland, 1989). Research on intercultural differences between the USA and France shows similarities between the perceptions of foods in terms of healthiness (Fischler & Masson, 2008, p. 54): in both countries the same foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables and fish) are considered to be healthy. Although there are several differences in the perception of natural foods, the use of pesticides, or the value of local food (Fischler & Masson, 2008), we adopt, in line with previous research, a perceptual approach that considers unhealthy foods to be highly caloric and fatty (e.g., Oakes, 2005; Raghunathan et al., 2006). We start by reviewing the literature on cultural differences of food perceptions. We propose that food perceptions are strongly anchored on a cultural heritage, which varies across countries, especially when comparing France and the USA. This food-related heritage explains the difference in food perceptions and may lead to different explicit (i.e., self-reported) but more importantly also implicit associations between healthiness and tastiness in France. Results from two studies are consistent with this framework and provide new insights into the literature about food perceptions.
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2. Conceptual background
2.2. France: an experiential approach to food consumption
There is clear evidence that French and US-Americans have very different relation and representation related to food (Fischler & Masson, 2008). Consider for instance what some have called, since Dolnick (1999) article, the ‘‘French Paradox’’: French eat relatively more unhealthy foods (more butter, for instance) than US-Americans, yet have lower levels of obesity and less heart disease problems. Since then, researchers have been trying to understand which factors could explain this paradox including the size of the portions, meal duration (Rozin, Kabnick, Pete, Fischler, & Shields, 2003) and, more recently, the impact of responsiveness to internal and external cues of satiation (Wansink, Payne, & Chandon, 2007). Understanding the link between food heritage and pleasure in eating is one possible approach to understand food perceptions. Researchers have been trying to understand the role of food in several countries and have shown that there is an important difference between France and the USA (e.g., Rozin et al., 1999). We focus on differences in food perceptions established through adult life because previous research demonstrated that French and USAmerican children have at the beginning the same kind of food preferences (e.g., chocolate) and dislikes (e.g., vegetables; Fischler & Masson, 2008). Therefore, differences established in adult life might be a consequence of different associations with food existing in each country.
For French adults food is often associated with pleasure and considered as something important in life (Rozin et al., 1999). When eating, French focus on pleasure, social interaction, culinary issues, and quality. In France the eating patterns emphasize moderation and high quality (Stearns, 1997). To ‘‘eat well’’ (or ‘‘bien manger’’, Fischler & Masson, 2008) is related with sensorial and social pleasure. Sensorial pleasure is ensured through balance, variety and freshness (Fischler & Masson, 2008), the main attributes, besides conviviality, of a ‘‘gastronomic meal’’ (i.e., an elaborated meal that lasts more than one hour), a concept that 84% of French consider accessible (Mathé, Tavoularis, & Pilorin T., 2009). Frenchmen tend to focus more on the experience of eating and less on the health consequences of eating (Rozin, Fischler, Shields, & Masson, 2006). This evidence suggests that in France there is an overall hedonic view of food consumption (Fischler & Masson, 2008; Flandrin, 2007; Rozin, 2005; Rozin et al., 1999, 2003, 2006). This leads us to believe that the unhealthy = tasty intuition does not necessarily exists in this country. There are other important differences in food habits between the USA and France, such as portion sizes (Rozin et al., 2003), amount of time dedicated to eating and importance of snacking in the daily intake (CREDOC, 2010), but these are recognized as consequences of the initial differences in food perceptions existing in each country (Fischler & Masson, 2008). In comparison to France, the US-American context generates more food-related stress (Rozin, 2005; Rozin et al., 1999). This factor, combined with restrictions on the consumption of unhealthy food, could make them attractive and justify the existence of an unhealthy = tasty intuition in America, but not in France. Additionally, evidence suggests that US-Americans tend to think (classify and categorize) about food more in terms of what is right and what is wrong (healthy versus unhealthy, allowed versus forbidden). And, as the forbidden is usually more desirable (see for example: Erskine, 2008; Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987), the food that is ‘‘wrong’’ is considered to be tastier. Conversely, as French consumers seem to have a different range of associations to food (pleasure, social/sharing dimension, and also health), they should not have such belief. We conducted a pre-test and two studies to verify these propositions: study 1 uses the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to verify spontaneous (or automatic1) food memory associations between food tastiness and healthiness in France; study 2 uses an experimental design to verify how the French intuition influences taste perceptions and amount consumed.
2.1. USA: a utilitarian view of food consumption US-Americans associate food with a biological need and evaluate it from a nutritional and health perspective. Concerning eating patterns, they tend to focus on high quantity and value for money (Stearns, 1997). In this context, ‘‘eating well’’ is mainly related to finding a good equilibrium in terms of nutriments (calories, carbohydrates, proteins, etc.) and demands some medical or nutritional knowledge (Fischler & Masson, 2008). A study analyzing family dynamics during meals revealed that US-American families focus on food as nutrition, consider it as a material good, give low priority to food as pleasure, and stimulate food as reward (e.g., dessert as reward; Ochs, Pontecorvo, & Fasulo, 1996). A consequence of this utilitarian approach of eating is that USAmericans seem to have a somehow negative view of foods in general. In the USA, food is considered to be more a source of worry than a source of pleasure (Fischler & Masson, 2008). Food is also considered as much a poison as it is a nutrient, and eating is judged almost as dangerous as not eating (Rozin et al., 1999). In this context where food seems to be perceived as more utilitarian than in other cultures (Rozin et al., 1999), eating decisions are private and personal, and consumers feel as they are alone to make these decisions. In an environment where an enormous amount of information is available, US-Americans find it difficult to eat well and associate high levels of anxiety and dissatisfaction to eating related decisions (i.e., a daily struggle to make the right decisions and control oneself; Fischler & Masson, 2008; Rozin et al., 1999). This could be one potential explanation for the existence of an unhealthy = tasty intuition in the USA. Another potential explanation for the link between unhealthiness and tastiness is linked to the importance of Protestant values in the US-American society. According to the Protestantism work ethic, it is morally adequate to give priority to utilities over luxuries (Raghunathan et al., 2006). In this context, earning the right to indulge requires hard working, and there is a clear distinction between serious and useful things and the ones that are considered superfluous or fun. Therefore, healthy foods will be clearly dissociated from good taste, favoring the American unhealthy = tasty intuition.
3. Pre-test We conducted a preliminary study to identify the key associations French have with unhealthy food and to measure the perception of healthiness and tastiness of several food items. 71 participants from the same population used in studies 1 and 2 first indicated in an open question what comes spontaneously to mind when they think about an unhealthy food. 45 (63.4%) participants explicitly mentioned both fatty and highly caloric food and 18 (25.3%) mentioned either fatty or highly caloric food. Only 30 (42.3%) participants mentioned any other association (e.g., 12 (16.9%) mentioned salty food and 4 (5.6%) mentioned pesticides). Only one participant did not mention either fatty or highly caloric food while at the same time mentioning another association 1 The memory associations can be either conscious or unconscious. The term implicit in the name of the task (IAT) tends to suggest that the memory associations assessed are unconscious when this is clearly not necessarily so. Yet, the IAT enables to assess memory associations that are automatically activated (i.e. that don’t require higher order processing).
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(aspartame). The other 7 participants mentioned generic associations like ‘‘beware’’ or ‘‘avoid buying’’. These results support the notion that, like in the USA (Raghunathan et al., 2006), in France unhealthy food is mainly associated to attributes such as highly caloric and fatty. Participants also rated several food items on healthiness and tastiness using seven-points scales (1 = ‘‘unhealthy’’ to 7 = ‘‘healthy’’ and 1 = ‘‘untasty’’ to 7 = ‘‘tasty’’). We obtained that all food items to be used in the Implicit Association Test of study 1 and belonging to the healthy food category (Table 1) are perceived as healthy (minimum score of healthiness 5.39 for the chicken breast) and all items belonging to the unhealthy food category are perceived as unhealthy (maximum score of healthiness of 2.63 for the pizza). We also selected a product perceived to be neutral in terms of healthiness and tastiness that could be used for the taste test conducted in study 2. The target product (‘‘milk-based fruit juice, made with milk and concentrated orange and mango’’) was rated average (test value = 4) in both tastiness, M = 4.17, SD = 1.84, t(70) = .77, p = .44 and healthiness M = 4.15, SD = 1.46, t(70) = .89, p = .37 and perceived tastiness and healthiness did not differ, t(70) = .07, p = .95.
4. Study 1 4.1. Methods 94 French undergraduate students from a major business school (mean age = 19.6 years, 53.2% female) who were above a minimally healthy body weight [body mass index (BMI) > 18.5, M = 21.16, SD = 1.96] participated in study 1 and conducted an Implicit Association Test in a laboratory (a French version of the IAT used by Raghunathan et al., 2006). The IAT enables to measure memory associations that are spontaneously activated and does not give respondents the opportunity to process their answer. The test was presented as a computerized categorization task, following the standard IAT procedure (Greenwald, Mcghee, & Schwartz, 1998). The IAT rests on the assumption that it should be easier to make the same behavioral response (i.e., a key press) to concepts that are strongly associated than to concepts that are weakly associated in memory. Participants have to perform several categorization tasks as fast as possible, including two focal tasks that are used to compute the IAT results. In one focal task participants have to
Table 1 Stimuli used in the IAT (adapted from Raghunathan et al., 2006). Picture list Unhealthy foods
Word list Healthy foods
Tasty Tasty Delicious Yummy Appetizing Flavorful Appealing Mouthwatering
Untasty Disliked Less tasty Unappealing Bland Flavorless Unappetizing Unpalatable
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press one key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of healthy food or a word representing untastiness and another key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of unhealthy food or a word representing tastiness (see Table 1 for the list of items used). In the second focal task2 participants have to press one key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of healthy food or a word representing tastiness and another key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of unhealthy food or a word representing untastiness. Association strength is measured by comparing the speed of categorizing items in these two different sorting conditions. To the extent that healthy food is perceived more untasty than unhealthy food, the mean response latency should be faster when healthy food is paired with untasty terms than when it is paired with tasty terms (Greenwald et al., 1998). We thus used response latencies (i.e., a measure of response time in milliseconds) to assess the direction of the intuition. We adapted the stimuli used by Raghunathan et al. (2006) to the French context (see Table 1). After completing the IAT participants answered a questionnaire with measures of their explicit belief in the unhealthy = tasty intuition (measured by their level of agreement on 1–5 Likert scales with two items ‘‘Things that are good for me rarely taste good,’’ and ‘‘There is no way to make food healthier without sacrificing taste’’; Raghunathan et al., 2006), dietary restraint scale (adapted from Polivy, Herman, & Howard, 1988), weight and height to compute BMI, and food perceptions. 4.2. Results Data from the IAT were prepared according to the scoring algorithm developed by Greenwald, Nosek, and Banaji (2003). Following this algorithm, we excluded 2 participants with response time faster than 300 ms on more than 10% of the critical trials (resulting in a final sample of 92 participants) and we eliminated trial response latencies smaller than 300 ms or higher than 10,000 ms (14 trials out of 11,776 were eliminated). The resulting score of the algorithm is called an IAT D score. A negative value indicates that healthy food is perceived as tastier than unhealthy food and a positive value indicates that unhealthy food is perceived as tastier than healthy food. Results of the IAT indicate that subjects are faster in the categorization task when healthy and tasty are associated (MLatency = 1112.53 ms) rather than healthy and untasty (MLatency = 1655.93 ms). This difference in response time is significant, MIAT D = .766, SD = .42, t(91) = 17.59, p < .001. Therefore, participants have a stronger implicit association between healthy foods and tastiness than they do between unhealthy foods and tastiness. To analyse the explicitness of the belief that healthy = untasty we averaged the two items into one single variable. Results indicate a mean of 2.30 (SD = .93) and this mean is inferior to the neutral point of the scale (value 3, ‘‘neither agree, nor disagree’’), t(91) = 7.18, p < .001, indicating that, on average, participants do not agree with the belief that healthy foods are untasty. The positive correlation between the IAT D score and the explicit belief also shows the consistency between the implicit and explicit beliefs, r = .389, p < .001. Indeed, the meta-analysis of Hofmann, Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, and Schmitt (2005) shows that this correlation level between the IAT and explicit measures is rather high. Interestingly, even when analyzing the IAT results among participants that do believe that healthy foods are untasty (explicitness of belief >3, n = 16), we found a stronger implicit association for the healthy = tasty intuition in comparison to the unhealthy = tasty intuition, MIAT D = .38, SD = .53, t(15) = 2.87, p = .01. This last
2
The order of the tasks was counterbalanced between subjects.
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result suggest that the healthy = tasty intuition persists even when participants do explicitly believe the opposite (i.e., healthy foods are untasty). Interestingly, there is a significant difference in the IAT results depending on the level of dietary restraint. The strength of the association between healthy and tasty is weaker for highly restrained eaters than for less restrained eaters, MIAT D High DR = .697, MIAT D Low DR = .861, t(82) = 1.99, p = .05. Highly restrained eaters associate less strongly what is healthy with tasty indicating a situation that is closer to the original unhealthy = tasty intuition documented in the US. These effects persist when controlling for BMI, yet the effect of BMI is not significant. This study suggests that the American unhealthy = tasty intuition does not exist in France where the opposite intuition healthy = tasty prevails. Yet, the highest the level of restrained eating, the less healthiness is associated with tastiness. In the USA, the unhealthy = tasty intuition influences actual enjoyment and foods perceived as less healthy are inferred to taste better. 5. Study 2 The objective of this experiment is to test whether the healthy = tasty French intuition also influences taste and enjoyment perceptions of a neutral product. Using a product with similar levels of healthiness and tastiness is important to have a true test of the intuition effect because the product is not already considered more hedonic or utilitarian, the only variation is due to the label that is manipulated. Following Raghunathan et al. (2006), we propose that the portrayed healthiness of a neutral product affects actual enjoyment and tastiness of the product. We suggest that in France a neutral product described as healthy receives better taste and pleasure evaluations than when it is described as unhealthy. Such a finding would indicate that the healthy = tasty intuition is used by participants when sampling different foods varying in perceived healthiness. Furthermore, we think that this intuition also influences the amount consumed and we hypothesize that participants will consume more of the neutral product when it is described as healthy than when it is described as unhealthy. 5.1. Methods Participants were 111 French undergraduate students (53.2% male, average age = 20.26 years) at a business school in a mid-sized town in France. They were all above a minimally healthy body weight [BMI > 18.5, M = 21.48, SD = 2.00]. Participants enrolled in this study in exchange of partial credit for a marketing course and they were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (neutral product with healthy label, neutral product with unhealthy label). To disguise the actual purpose of the study, participants were informed that they were going to participate in an evaluation of different snacks considered for a future event organized by the school. The snacks were hidden and shown individually to each participant at the beginning of the experiment. Participants had three minutes to: first, have a sip of water and then, test each kind of snack. One snack (filler 1) was presented as healthy (‘‘dried slices of apples, generally considered as healthy’’), another (filler 2) as unhealthy (‘‘chips, traditional recipe, generally considered as unhealthy’’) and the target snack was randomly presented as ‘‘generally considered healthy’’ for half of our sample and as ‘‘generally considered unhealthy’’ for the other half. It was important to have filler products to avoid demand effects. The target snack was ‘‘milk-based fruit juice, made with milk and concentrated orange and mango’’, a product perceived to be neutral in terms of healthiness and tastiness in our pre-test. Participants were informed that they could consume as much as they wish of the three products.
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Table 2 Results of study 2 for the neutral product (milk-based fruit juice).
Perceived healthiness Perceived tastiness Pleasure associated with consumption Perceived quality Quantity consumed * **
Label «Generally considered healthy» N = 49 M (SD)
Label «Generally considered unhealthy» N = 62 M (SD)
4.57 (1.19) 5.53 (1.50) 5.20 (1.47) 5.26 (1.41) 102.4 (47.6)
4.10 (1.20) 4.74 (1.73) 4.40 (2.01) 4.29 (1.41) 111.7 (45.9)
t-value 2.08* 2.53* 2.33* 3.62** 1.05
p < 0.05. p < 0.01.
Once the time was over, the experimenter removed the products and surreptitiously weighed the leftovers to determine consumption, while participants were asked to complete a questionnaire about appreciation of the snacks tested, eating habits, and general questions (such as age, weight, height, and hour of the last meal). 5.2. Results As expected, French participants’ ratings of the extent to which they considered the milk-based fruit juice to be healthy were stronger in the healthy label condition (see Table 2). Results indicate that, as hypothesized, perception of tastiness of the milk-based fruit juice was higher among participants in the healthy label condition compared to participants in the unhealthy label group. The impact of variables that could influence food perceptions such as hunger, thirst, gender, level of dietary restraint, BMI, or the dislike of orange or mango were initially tested but showed no effect and therefore are not discussed further. The pleasure associated with the consumption of the milkbased fruit juice also varied significantly across the two conditions. Pleasure associated with consumption was higher among participants in the healthy label condition in comparison with participants in the unhealthy label group. Furthermore, participants judged the milk-based fruit juice to be of higher quality in the healthy label condition than in the unhealthy label condition (Table 2). However, contrary to our prediction, a t-test revealed no significant differences in the amount of juice consumed across conditions, t(109) = 1.04, p = .30. Results from study 2 are consistent with study 1 and with our conceptualization. These findings suggest that the healthy = tasty French intuition influences not only taste perceptions but also the pleasure associated with the food consumption and the perceived quality of the product. 6. General discussion Results from two studies indicate that the healthy = tasty intuition predominates in France. These results also suggest that the unhealthy = tasty American intuition identified by previous research (Raghunathan et al., 2006) may vary cross-culturally similarly to explicit food perceptions for which differences have been identified in previous research (Fischler & Masson, 2008; Rozin et al., 2006). These results expand previous research on intercultural differences in food perceptions because they show that implicit associations are stronger and sometimes contradictory with explicit beliefs: even participants that believed that unhealthy foods are tastier had a stronger healthy = tasty implicit intuition. Understanding implicit processes is important because they explain most spontaneous behaviors and previous research demonstrated that eating choices are largely governed by automatic habits (e.g., Rothman, Sheeran, & Wood, 2009). Furthermore, our results demonstrate that the healthy = tasty French intuition is weaker among restrained eaters, suggesting that chronic dieting may be one potential explanation to the shift
toward the American model where unhealthy foods are considered tastier. Our second study also demonstrates that this intuition influences taste perceptions when evaluating a neutral food product. The effects of a healthy label also influenced participants’ ratings of pleasure associated with the consumption of the neutral product and its quality perceptions. These results may suggest a halo effect since all ratings go in the same direction. Future research is required to confirm or rule out this alternative explanation. From a theoretical standpoint, this research extends knowledge on intercultural differences in food perceptions. It demonstrates that implicit associations between tastiness and healthiness are contradictory in France and in the USA. This could be one potential explanation for differences in the progression of obesity in both countries. This article has also important practical implications. First of all, public policy makers may reinforce the French model, emphasizing the pleasure of eating and avoiding increasing guilt associated with food consumption. Our research demonstrates that restrained eaters tend to have a less strong healthy = tasty intuition, suggesting that guilt associated with food consumption could be one of the keys to explain the inter-cultural differences identified here. Further research should look into the mechanism behind these effects. These results also have important managerial implications. A label ‘‘Good for health’’, mentioned on the packaging seems not to have the same effect among different cultures. Indeed, such label could have a good impact on the taste perceptions for French consumers whereas American consumers could consider the product to be untasty. Future research should address this question. It is important to highlight the limitations of this work. The use of undergraduate students undermines representation in terms of BMI categories, with an artificially low representation of overweight and obese individuals. Since dietary restraint are one of the potential mechanisms to explain our results, further research should verify these effects among an overweight or obese sample in France.
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Food Quality and Preference journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodqual
Short Communication
Unhealthy food is not tastier for everybody: The ‘‘healthy = tasty’’ French intuition Carolina O.C. Werle a,b,⇑, Olivier Trendel a, Gauthier Ardito a a b
Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12 rue Pierre Sémard BP 127, 38003 Cedex 01, France CERAG, 150 rue de la chimie BP 47, 38040 Cedex 9, Grenoble, France
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 5 April 2012 Received in revised form 23 July 2012 Accepted 24 July 2012 Available online 3 August 2012 Keywords: Implicit associations Food perception Health Obesity Cross-cultural differences Taste
a b s t r a c t Previous research demonstrated that, for US-Americans, unhealthy food is implicitly associated to tastiness. Based on intercultural differences in food perception between France and USA, our objective is to verify if such differences impact food-related implicit associations, taste evaluations, and food consumption. Our first study demonstrates that the opposite intuition exists in France: unhealthy food is spontaneously associated with bad taste, while healthy food is linked to tastiness. Our second study investigates how the healthy = tasty French intuition influences taste perceptions in a product test conducted in an experimental lab. Results indicate that a neutral food described as healthy is considered tastier, more pleasurable and of better quality than when it is described as unhealthy. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Obesity is a major predicament of the contemporary Western world. Today, 34% of adults in the United States (Leavitt, 2008) and 14.5% of them in France (Obépi, 2009) are obese. The increase in obesity rates is mostly due to changes in lifestyle habits. Over the past century, life in most developed countries has evolved to become increasingly comfortable and highly caloric food is largely and readily available and tends to be overconsumed. One recent research suggests that one factor explaining the preference for highly caloric food is the unhealthy = tasty intuition: according to Raghunathan, Naylor, and Hoyer (2006) American consumers tend to overconsume foods perceived as unhealthy because they spontaneously and sometimes unconsciously consider that such food tastes better than healthy food. Indeed, even American consumers that explicitly report (i.e., in a questionnaire) that there is no link between level of food healthiness and tastiness were actually found to implicitly believe in the unhealthy = tasty intuition. However, the assumption that unhealthy food tastes better may be only true for US-American consumers though. Based on literature suggesting strong intercultural differences in food perceptions (Fischler & Masson, 2008; Rozin, Fischler, Imada, Sarubin, & ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Marketing, Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12 rue Pierre Sémard BP 127, 38003 cedex 01, France. Tel.: +33 (0) 476706544; fax: +33 (0) 476706138. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.O.C. Werle). 0950-3293/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2012.07.007
Wrzesniewski, 1999), our objective is to investigate whether this unhealthy = tasty intuition exists in France and how it influences the food perceptions and eating behaviors. In this research we consider unhealthy foods to be highly caloric or fatty foods. There is a substantial overlap between these concepts: in general unhealthy foods are considered as both highly caloric and rich in fat (Oakes, 2005). Highly caloric foods are also considered as dietary forbidden (Knight & Boland, 1989). Research on intercultural differences between the USA and France shows similarities between the perceptions of foods in terms of healthiness (Fischler & Masson, 2008, p. 54): in both countries the same foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables and fish) are considered to be healthy. Although there are several differences in the perception of natural foods, the use of pesticides, or the value of local food (Fischler & Masson, 2008), we adopt, in line with previous research, a perceptual approach that considers unhealthy foods to be highly caloric and fatty (e.g., Oakes, 2005; Raghunathan et al., 2006). We start by reviewing the literature on cultural differences of food perceptions. We propose that food perceptions are strongly anchored on a cultural heritage, which varies across countries, especially when comparing France and the USA. This food-related heritage explains the difference in food perceptions and may lead to different explicit (i.e., self-reported) but more importantly also implicit associations between healthiness and tastiness in France. Results from two studies are consistent with this framework and provide new insights into the literature about food perceptions.
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2. Conceptual background
2.2. France: an experiential approach to food consumption
There is clear evidence that French and US-Americans have very different relation and representation related to food (Fischler & Masson, 2008). Consider for instance what some have called, since Dolnick (1999) article, the ‘‘French Paradox’’: French eat relatively more unhealthy foods (more butter, for instance) than US-Americans, yet have lower levels of obesity and less heart disease problems. Since then, researchers have been trying to understand which factors could explain this paradox including the size of the portions, meal duration (Rozin, Kabnick, Pete, Fischler, & Shields, 2003) and, more recently, the impact of responsiveness to internal and external cues of satiation (Wansink, Payne, & Chandon, 2007). Understanding the link between food heritage and pleasure in eating is one possible approach to understand food perceptions. Researchers have been trying to understand the role of food in several countries and have shown that there is an important difference between France and the USA (e.g., Rozin et al., 1999). We focus on differences in food perceptions established through adult life because previous research demonstrated that French and USAmerican children have at the beginning the same kind of food preferences (e.g., chocolate) and dislikes (e.g., vegetables; Fischler & Masson, 2008). Therefore, differences established in adult life might be a consequence of different associations with food existing in each country.
For French adults food is often associated with pleasure and considered as something important in life (Rozin et al., 1999). When eating, French focus on pleasure, social interaction, culinary issues, and quality. In France the eating patterns emphasize moderation and high quality (Stearns, 1997). To ‘‘eat well’’ (or ‘‘bien manger’’, Fischler & Masson, 2008) is related with sensorial and social pleasure. Sensorial pleasure is ensured through balance, variety and freshness (Fischler & Masson, 2008), the main attributes, besides conviviality, of a ‘‘gastronomic meal’’ (i.e., an elaborated meal that lasts more than one hour), a concept that 84% of French consider accessible (Mathé, Tavoularis, & Pilorin T., 2009). Frenchmen tend to focus more on the experience of eating and less on the health consequences of eating (Rozin, Fischler, Shields, & Masson, 2006). This evidence suggests that in France there is an overall hedonic view of food consumption (Fischler & Masson, 2008; Flandrin, 2007; Rozin, 2005; Rozin et al., 1999, 2003, 2006). This leads us to believe that the unhealthy = tasty intuition does not necessarily exists in this country. There are other important differences in food habits between the USA and France, such as portion sizes (Rozin et al., 2003), amount of time dedicated to eating and importance of snacking in the daily intake (CREDOC, 2010), but these are recognized as consequences of the initial differences in food perceptions existing in each country (Fischler & Masson, 2008). In comparison to France, the US-American context generates more food-related stress (Rozin, 2005; Rozin et al., 1999). This factor, combined with restrictions on the consumption of unhealthy food, could make them attractive and justify the existence of an unhealthy = tasty intuition in America, but not in France. Additionally, evidence suggests that US-Americans tend to think (classify and categorize) about food more in terms of what is right and what is wrong (healthy versus unhealthy, allowed versus forbidden). And, as the forbidden is usually more desirable (see for example: Erskine, 2008; Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987), the food that is ‘‘wrong’’ is considered to be tastier. Conversely, as French consumers seem to have a different range of associations to food (pleasure, social/sharing dimension, and also health), they should not have such belief. We conducted a pre-test and two studies to verify these propositions: study 1 uses the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to verify spontaneous (or automatic1) food memory associations between food tastiness and healthiness in France; study 2 uses an experimental design to verify how the French intuition influences taste perceptions and amount consumed.
2.1. USA: a utilitarian view of food consumption US-Americans associate food with a biological need and evaluate it from a nutritional and health perspective. Concerning eating patterns, they tend to focus on high quantity and value for money (Stearns, 1997). In this context, ‘‘eating well’’ is mainly related to finding a good equilibrium in terms of nutriments (calories, carbohydrates, proteins, etc.) and demands some medical or nutritional knowledge (Fischler & Masson, 2008). A study analyzing family dynamics during meals revealed that US-American families focus on food as nutrition, consider it as a material good, give low priority to food as pleasure, and stimulate food as reward (e.g., dessert as reward; Ochs, Pontecorvo, & Fasulo, 1996). A consequence of this utilitarian approach of eating is that USAmericans seem to have a somehow negative view of foods in general. In the USA, food is considered to be more a source of worry than a source of pleasure (Fischler & Masson, 2008). Food is also considered as much a poison as it is a nutrient, and eating is judged almost as dangerous as not eating (Rozin et al., 1999). In this context where food seems to be perceived as more utilitarian than in other cultures (Rozin et al., 1999), eating decisions are private and personal, and consumers feel as they are alone to make these decisions. In an environment where an enormous amount of information is available, US-Americans find it difficult to eat well and associate high levels of anxiety and dissatisfaction to eating related decisions (i.e., a daily struggle to make the right decisions and control oneself; Fischler & Masson, 2008; Rozin et al., 1999). This could be one potential explanation for the existence of an unhealthy = tasty intuition in the USA. Another potential explanation for the link between unhealthiness and tastiness is linked to the importance of Protestant values in the US-American society. According to the Protestantism work ethic, it is morally adequate to give priority to utilities over luxuries (Raghunathan et al., 2006). In this context, earning the right to indulge requires hard working, and there is a clear distinction between serious and useful things and the ones that are considered superfluous or fun. Therefore, healthy foods will be clearly dissociated from good taste, favoring the American unhealthy = tasty intuition.
3. Pre-test We conducted a preliminary study to identify the key associations French have with unhealthy food and to measure the perception of healthiness and tastiness of several food items. 71 participants from the same population used in studies 1 and 2 first indicated in an open question what comes spontaneously to mind when they think about an unhealthy food. 45 (63.4%) participants explicitly mentioned both fatty and highly caloric food and 18 (25.3%) mentioned either fatty or highly caloric food. Only 30 (42.3%) participants mentioned any other association (e.g., 12 (16.9%) mentioned salty food and 4 (5.6%) mentioned pesticides). Only one participant did not mention either fatty or highly caloric food while at the same time mentioning another association 1 The memory associations can be either conscious or unconscious. The term implicit in the name of the task (IAT) tends to suggest that the memory associations assessed are unconscious when this is clearly not necessarily so. Yet, the IAT enables to assess memory associations that are automatically activated (i.e. that don’t require higher order processing).
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(aspartame). The other 7 participants mentioned generic associations like ‘‘beware’’ or ‘‘avoid buying’’. These results support the notion that, like in the USA (Raghunathan et al., 2006), in France unhealthy food is mainly associated to attributes such as highly caloric and fatty. Participants also rated several food items on healthiness and tastiness using seven-points scales (1 = ‘‘unhealthy’’ to 7 = ‘‘healthy’’ and 1 = ‘‘untasty’’ to 7 = ‘‘tasty’’). We obtained that all food items to be used in the Implicit Association Test of study 1 and belonging to the healthy food category (Table 1) are perceived as healthy (minimum score of healthiness 5.39 for the chicken breast) and all items belonging to the unhealthy food category are perceived as unhealthy (maximum score of healthiness of 2.63 for the pizza). We also selected a product perceived to be neutral in terms of healthiness and tastiness that could be used for the taste test conducted in study 2. The target product (‘‘milk-based fruit juice, made with milk and concentrated orange and mango’’) was rated average (test value = 4) in both tastiness, M = 4.17, SD = 1.84, t(70) = .77, p = .44 and healthiness M = 4.15, SD = 1.46, t(70) = .89, p = .37 and perceived tastiness and healthiness did not differ, t(70) = .07, p = .95.
4. Study 1 4.1. Methods 94 French undergraduate students from a major business school (mean age = 19.6 years, 53.2% female) who were above a minimally healthy body weight [body mass index (BMI) > 18.5, M = 21.16, SD = 1.96] participated in study 1 and conducted an Implicit Association Test in a laboratory (a French version of the IAT used by Raghunathan et al., 2006). The IAT enables to measure memory associations that are spontaneously activated and does not give respondents the opportunity to process their answer. The test was presented as a computerized categorization task, following the standard IAT procedure (Greenwald, Mcghee, & Schwartz, 1998). The IAT rests on the assumption that it should be easier to make the same behavioral response (i.e., a key press) to concepts that are strongly associated than to concepts that are weakly associated in memory. Participants have to perform several categorization tasks as fast as possible, including two focal tasks that are used to compute the IAT results. In one focal task participants have to
Table 1 Stimuli used in the IAT (adapted from Raghunathan et al., 2006). Picture list Unhealthy foods
Word list Healthy foods
Tasty Tasty Delicious Yummy Appetizing Flavorful Appealing Mouthwatering
Untasty Disliked Less tasty Unappealing Bland Flavorless Unappetizing Unpalatable
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press one key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of healthy food or a word representing untastiness and another key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of unhealthy food or a word representing tastiness (see Table 1 for the list of items used). In the second focal task2 participants have to press one key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of healthy food or a word representing tastiness and another key when the item appearing on the center of the screen is a picture of unhealthy food or a word representing untastiness. Association strength is measured by comparing the speed of categorizing items in these two different sorting conditions. To the extent that healthy food is perceived more untasty than unhealthy food, the mean response latency should be faster when healthy food is paired with untasty terms than when it is paired with tasty terms (Greenwald et al., 1998). We thus used response latencies (i.e., a measure of response time in milliseconds) to assess the direction of the intuition. We adapted the stimuli used by Raghunathan et al. (2006) to the French context (see Table 1). After completing the IAT participants answered a questionnaire with measures of their explicit belief in the unhealthy = tasty intuition (measured by their level of agreement on 1–5 Likert scales with two items ‘‘Things that are good for me rarely taste good,’’ and ‘‘There is no way to make food healthier without sacrificing taste’’; Raghunathan et al., 2006), dietary restraint scale (adapted from Polivy, Herman, & Howard, 1988), weight and height to compute BMI, and food perceptions. 4.2. Results Data from the IAT were prepared according to the scoring algorithm developed by Greenwald, Nosek, and Banaji (2003). Following this algorithm, we excluded 2 participants with response time faster than 300 ms on more than 10% of the critical trials (resulting in a final sample of 92 participants) and we eliminated trial response latencies smaller than 300 ms or higher than 10,000 ms (14 trials out of 11,776 were eliminated). The resulting score of the algorithm is called an IAT D score. A negative value indicates that healthy food is perceived as tastier than unhealthy food and a positive value indicates that unhealthy food is perceived as tastier than healthy food. Results of the IAT indicate that subjects are faster in the categorization task when healthy and tasty are associated (MLatency = 1112.53 ms) rather than healthy and untasty (MLatency = 1655.93 ms). This difference in response time is significant, MIAT D = .766, SD = .42, t(91) = 17.59, p < .001. Therefore, participants have a stronger implicit association between healthy foods and tastiness than they do between unhealthy foods and tastiness. To analyse the explicitness of the belief that healthy = untasty we averaged the two items into one single variable. Results indicate a mean of 2.30 (SD = .93) and this mean is inferior to the neutral point of the scale (value 3, ‘‘neither agree, nor disagree’’), t(91) = 7.18, p < .001, indicating that, on average, participants do not agree with the belief that healthy foods are untasty. The positive correlation between the IAT D score and the explicit belief also shows the consistency between the implicit and explicit beliefs, r = .389, p < .001. Indeed, the meta-analysis of Hofmann, Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, and Schmitt (2005) shows that this correlation level between the IAT and explicit measures is rather high. Interestingly, even when analyzing the IAT results among participants that do believe that healthy foods are untasty (explicitness of belief >3, n = 16), we found a stronger implicit association for the healthy = tasty intuition in comparison to the unhealthy = tasty intuition, MIAT D = .38, SD = .53, t(15) = 2.87, p = .01. This last
2
The order of the tasks was counterbalanced between subjects.
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result suggest that the healthy = tasty intuition persists even when participants do explicitly believe the opposite (i.e., healthy foods are untasty). Interestingly, there is a significant difference in the IAT results depending on the level of dietary restraint. The strength of the association between healthy and tasty is weaker for highly restrained eaters than for less restrained eaters, MIAT D High DR = .697, MIAT D Low DR = .861, t(82) = 1.99, p = .05. Highly restrained eaters associate less strongly what is healthy with tasty indicating a situation that is closer to the original unhealthy = tasty intuition documented in the US. These effects persist when controlling for BMI, yet the effect of BMI is not significant. This study suggests that the American unhealthy = tasty intuition does not exist in France where the opposite intuition healthy = tasty prevails. Yet, the highest the level of restrained eating, the less healthiness is associated with tastiness. In the USA, the unhealthy = tasty intuition influences actual enjoyment and foods perceived as less healthy are inferred to taste better. 5. Study 2 The objective of this experiment is to test whether the healthy = tasty French intuition also influences taste and enjoyment perceptions of a neutral product. Using a product with similar levels of healthiness and tastiness is important to have a true test of the intuition effect because the product is not already considered more hedonic or utilitarian, the only variation is due to the label that is manipulated. Following Raghunathan et al. (2006), we propose that the portrayed healthiness of a neutral product affects actual enjoyment and tastiness of the product. We suggest that in France a neutral product described as healthy receives better taste and pleasure evaluations than when it is described as unhealthy. Such a finding would indicate that the healthy = tasty intuition is used by participants when sampling different foods varying in perceived healthiness. Furthermore, we think that this intuition also influences the amount consumed and we hypothesize that participants will consume more of the neutral product when it is described as healthy than when it is described as unhealthy. 5.1. Methods Participants were 111 French undergraduate students (53.2% male, average age = 20.26 years) at a business school in a mid-sized town in France. They were all above a minimally healthy body weight [BMI > 18.5, M = 21.48, SD = 2.00]. Participants enrolled in this study in exchange of partial credit for a marketing course and they were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (neutral product with healthy label, neutral product with unhealthy label). To disguise the actual purpose of the study, participants were informed that they were going to participate in an evaluation of different snacks considered for a future event organized by the school. The snacks were hidden and shown individually to each participant at the beginning of the experiment. Participants had three minutes to: first, have a sip of water and then, test each kind of snack. One snack (filler 1) was presented as healthy (‘‘dried slices of apples, generally considered as healthy’’), another (filler 2) as unhealthy (‘‘chips, traditional recipe, generally considered as unhealthy’’) and the target snack was randomly presented as ‘‘generally considered healthy’’ for half of our sample and as ‘‘generally considered unhealthy’’ for the other half. It was important to have filler products to avoid demand effects. The target snack was ‘‘milk-based fruit juice, made with milk and concentrated orange and mango’’, a product perceived to be neutral in terms of healthiness and tastiness in our pre-test. Participants were informed that they could consume as much as they wish of the three products.
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Table 2 Results of study 2 for the neutral product (milk-based fruit juice).
Perceived healthiness Perceived tastiness Pleasure associated with consumption Perceived quality Quantity consumed * **
Label «Generally considered healthy» N = 49 M (SD)
Label «Generally considered unhealthy» N = 62 M (SD)
4.57 (1.19) 5.53 (1.50) 5.20 (1.47) 5.26 (1.41) 102.4 (47.6)
4.10 (1.20) 4.74 (1.73) 4.40 (2.01) 4.29 (1.41) 111.7 (45.9)
t-value 2.08* 2.53* 2.33* 3.62** 1.05
p < 0.05. p < 0.01.
Once the time was over, the experimenter removed the products and surreptitiously weighed the leftovers to determine consumption, while participants were asked to complete a questionnaire about appreciation of the snacks tested, eating habits, and general questions (such as age, weight, height, and hour of the last meal). 5.2. Results As expected, French participants’ ratings of the extent to which they considered the milk-based fruit juice to be healthy were stronger in the healthy label condition (see Table 2). Results indicate that, as hypothesized, perception of tastiness of the milk-based fruit juice was higher among participants in the healthy label condition compared to participants in the unhealthy label group. The impact of variables that could influence food perceptions such as hunger, thirst, gender, level of dietary restraint, BMI, or the dislike of orange or mango were initially tested but showed no effect and therefore are not discussed further. The pleasure associated with the consumption of the milkbased fruit juice also varied significantly across the two conditions. Pleasure associated with consumption was higher among participants in the healthy label condition in comparison with participants in the unhealthy label group. Furthermore, participants judged the milk-based fruit juice to be of higher quality in the healthy label condition than in the unhealthy label condition (Table 2). However, contrary to our prediction, a t-test revealed no significant differences in the amount of juice consumed across conditions, t(109) = 1.04, p = .30. Results from study 2 are consistent with study 1 and with our conceptualization. These findings suggest that the healthy = tasty French intuition influences not only taste perceptions but also the pleasure associated with the food consumption and the perceived quality of the product. 6. General discussion Results from two studies indicate that the healthy = tasty intuition predominates in France. These results also suggest that the unhealthy = tasty American intuition identified by previous research (Raghunathan et al., 2006) may vary cross-culturally similarly to explicit food perceptions for which differences have been identified in previous research (Fischler & Masson, 2008; Rozin et al., 2006). These results expand previous research on intercultural differences in food perceptions because they show that implicit associations are stronger and sometimes contradictory with explicit beliefs: even participants that believed that unhealthy foods are tastier had a stronger healthy = tasty implicit intuition. Understanding implicit processes is important because they explain most spontaneous behaviors and previous research demonstrated that eating choices are largely governed by automatic habits (e.g., Rothman, Sheeran, & Wood, 2009). Furthermore, our results demonstrate that the healthy = tasty French intuition is weaker among restrained eaters, suggesting that chronic dieting may be one potential explanation to the shift
toward the American model where unhealthy foods are considered tastier. Our second study also demonstrates that this intuition influences taste perceptions when evaluating a neutral food product. The effects of a healthy label also influenced participants’ ratings of pleasure associated with the consumption of the neutral product and its quality perceptions. These results may suggest a halo effect since all ratings go in the same direction. Future research is required to confirm or rule out this alternative explanation. From a theoretical standpoint, this research extends knowledge on intercultural differences in food perceptions. It demonstrates that implicit associations between tastiness and healthiness are contradictory in France and in the USA. This could be one potential explanation for differences in the progression of obesity in both countries. This article has also important practical implications. First of all, public policy makers may reinforce the French model, emphasizing the pleasure of eating and avoiding increasing guilt associated with food consumption. Our research demonstrates that restrained eaters tend to have a less strong healthy = tasty intuition, suggesting that guilt associated with food consumption could be one of the keys to explain the inter-cultural differences identified here. Further research should look into the mechanism behind these effects. These results also have important managerial implications. A label ‘‘Good for health’’, mentioned on the packaging seems not to have the same effect among different cultures. Indeed, such label could have a good impact on the taste perceptions for French consumers whereas American consumers could consider the product to be untasty. Future research should address this question. It is important to highlight the limitations of this work. The use of undergraduate students undermines representation in terms of BMI categories, with an artificially low representation of overweight and obese individuals. Since dietary restraint are one of the potential mechanisms to explain our results, further research should verify these effects among an overweight or obese sample in France.
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