Healthy Food Identification: Food Cues and Claims Affect Speeded and Thoughtful Evaluations of Food

A matter of the metric? Sugar content overestimation is less pronounced in sugar cubes versus grams

To make healthy food choices, consumers need to be aware of the sugar content of foods. Units act as an environmental cue that might influence sugar content estimation accuracy. The present study (1) tested whether estimations of sugar content are more accurate in sugar cubes vs grams, (2) compared accuracy of sugar content to estimations of the foods' weight and energy content, and (3) investigated gender, education, and body mass index as potential correlates. A sample of 886 adults was randomly assigned to estimating the sugar content of 10 common foods in grams or cubes. Estimations of sugar content diverged considerably from actual values in both groups (0.22 ≤ Cohen's dsgrams ≤ 1.20; 0.20 ≤ Cohen's dscubes ≤ 1.10), but were more pronounced for sugar content estimations in grams in 7 out of 10 foods (ts ≥ 4.04, Ps < .001, Cohen's ds ≥ 0.14). Sugar content misestimation was somewhat more pronounced than misestimation of weight (0.05 ≤ Cohen's ds ≤ 1.43) and energy content (0.04 ≤ Cohen's ds ≤ 1.19). Relationships between sugar content misestimation and gender (0.00 ≤ Cohen's ds ≤ 0.33), education (-0.07 ≤ r ≤ 0.11), and body mass index (-0.08 ≤ r ≤ 0.06) were mostly negligible. Although sugar content estimations were somewhat more accurate in sugar cubes vs grams, estimation accuracy is generally low. In addition to promoting consumers' knowledge through labeling and education, additional avenues for interventions might need to be explored for sizeable effects on food choices.

Applying Optimal Foraging to Young Adult Decision-Making after Food Advertising Exposure

This study combined theory from the fields of communication, behavioral ecology, and ecological psychology to examine how relevant factors about food influence the timing and trajectory of our decision-making after exposure to food advertisements. Young healthy adult participants (N = 108) completed a forced-choice, speeded decision-making latency task before and after viewing a set of advertisements. Results suggested that participants were more appetitively motivated by more energy-dense foods (i.e., higher calorie per gram) using direct food cues (i.e., were directly available to the senses, were visible), but after exposure to advertisements, this predisposition was less pronounced. Advertisement food cues were also important in decision-making, especially in coalition with the food cues used in the decision-making task stimuli. This study supports an optimal foraging perspective being expanded to human behavioral contexts in a modern landscape. Food advertising and packaging cues interacted with energy density level of food to provide information relevant to biological imperatives, which significantly altered food consumption decisions.

Conditioned "Cross Fading": The Incentive Motivational Effects of Mediated-Polysubstance Pairings on Alcohol, Marijuana, and Junk Food Craving

The bulk of mass media and substance cue research has examined the processes and effects of substance cue images in isolation under controlled experimental conditions. However, little attention has been devoted to delineating the specific outcomes associated with simultaneous polysubstance depictions. This study experimentally examined whether alcohol, marijuana, and junk food mediated cues influence craving independently and whether craving for these substances is co-facilitated by simultaneous polysubstance cue depictions. At a laboratory session, participants reported their craving to substance cues in isolation and when paired with one another. The results from this study support the incentive sensitization model and polysubstance literature indicating that alcohol and marijuana cues facilitate craving for both alcohol and marijuana above and beyond when alcohol and marijuana cues are depicted in isolation for high and low users of each substance. Junk food craving was not facilitated by alcohol and marijuana cues. Theoretically, this study supports the notion that simultaneous and repeated use of multiple substances results in greater hypersensitivity and craving to mediated polysubstance cues than the cues in isolation. Practically, this study provides a word of caution for researchers examining craving responses to mediated substance cue messages and recommendations for health professionals and message designers.

Active Confirmation Bias in the Evaluative Processing of Food Images

Predictive processing is fundamental to many aspects of the human mind, including perception and decision-making. It remains to be elucidated, however, in which way predictive information impacts on evaluative processing, particularly in tasks that employ bivalent stimulus sets. Various accounts, including framing, proactive interference, and cognitive control, appear to imply contradictory proposals on the relation between prediction and preference formation. To disambiguate whether predictive cues produce congruent biases versus opponent mechanisms in evaluative processing, we conducted two experiments in which participants were asked to rate individual food images. The image database included appetitive and aversive items. In each trial, a cue predicted, with varying degrees of reliability, the valence of the impending food image. In both experiments, we found that the ratings exhibited congruent biases as a function of the reliability of the predictive cue, with the highest evaluations following the most reliable positive-valence predictions. Eye prepositioning further showed a selective spatial bias suggestive of response preparation in line with the predictions. The response times also exhibited a pattern of results consistent with selective preparation, producing slow responses following invalid predictions. The data suggested an active form of evaluative processing, implementing a confirmation bias that aims to accommodate the prediction.