The “Health Aura”
Yesterday I was cooking a lamb ragu that’s not especially healthy. It kept running through my head that maybe I should also make some brussel sprouts on the side to make it healthier. But of course it doesn’t really work that way; the quantity of fat or calories or whatever in a pasta sauce isn’t negated by adding a side dish of vegetables. Still, just about everyone falls into that kind of trap now and again and I think everyone who’s not a Chicago School economist understands how this works. But this finding (via Ezra Klein) is truly weird. It seems that the mere presence of a salad on a fast food menu makes people more likely to order french fries.
The causal mechanism that Keith Wilcox, one of the report’s authors, gave to The New York Times doesn’t strike me as super-compelling: “When you consider the healthy option, you say, well, I could have that option. That lowers your guard, leading to self-indulgent behavior.” The measured effect in their study, however, is not a small one so it would be interesting to see if this result can be replicated elsewhere. The study will be out soon in The Journal of Consumer Research.
The Food Politics blog remarks labels this phenomenon “health aura” and says it “explains a lot about current food marketing trends” such as how I “may have noticed that vitamins, antioxidants, and omega-3’s are added to everything these days.” That kind of marketing gimmick, however, seems like a much cruder thing. People have heard that omega-3s are good for you, so you take a product that’s not good for you, put some omega-3s in it, and slap a big graphic on your box, thus implying that your omega-3 enhanced Fritos are health food. If I’m reading it right, this new study is saying that you could sell more Fritos just by putting them on the shelf adjacent to something that really is healthy.
43 Responses to “The “Health Aura””
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
April 16th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Yeah, that offered rationale is pretty counter-intuitive. Much more intuitive, I think, is that customers look at the salad on the menu and think, “this is apparently a place that believes in healthy food. Therefore, their fries must not be too unhealthy.”
April 16th, 2009 at 11:14 am
It’s worth nothing that there’s little particularly ‘healthy’ about McDonald’s salads either, particularly if you order them with the full-fat dressings (which most people do) you might as well eat a Big Mac.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Or the rebellious eater, who sees the salad on the Mickey Dees menu and says “I’m not going to eat that wimpy green stuff forced on me by a bunch of tree-hugging, PC, pinko, commie teabagging fascists”, and then orders the fries out of defiance.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I think a significant number of people, consciously or otherwise, actually *resent* health food options, and order the fries out of a sort of pique.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:18 am
There are two reasons why adding brussel sprouts to your dinner makes it healthier.
1. They have nutrients such as Vitamin C, Iron, Potassium, etc., that you might not get from your lamb ragu. Fat and calories aren’t the only metrics of nutrition (and they aren’t all bad).
2. To reach satiation, you eat less of your (presumably unhealthy) lamb ragu when you’re also eating the (presumably healthy) sprouts.
It’s not a trap. It’s a balancing act.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Matt,
Your general point about the limitations of human psychology is very valid. It is actively exploited by marketers who promote very unhealthy products, loaded with sugars, with labels like “fat-free”, “cholesterol free” or “zero transfat”.
However, I think you should also educate yourself and reconsider your assumptions about nutrition and what is good and bad for you. Lamb might actually be good for you.
There are a lot of nutritional advice that tell you to eat plenty of foods like whole grains and “heart healthy” poly-unsaturated vegetal oils. However, contrary to lamb, these kinds of food do not belong to our evolutionary past, and as a first approach, it is unlikely that our bodies are well adapted to it. And there is plenty of scientific evidence that “Paleolithic” style nutrition works best for most people (I also speak from personal experience, but this admittedly anecdotal).
April 16th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Sorry to break up the new-media know-it-all contrarianism party, but a 1000 calorie meal consisting of lamb stew is less healthy than a 1000 calorie meal consisting of lamb stew and brussel sprouts on the side. There is a less fat in the second meal.
I realize you did not actually dispute this, but I do think you overlook this as a reason for having healthy side-dishes.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Why is the lamb stew ipso-facto unhealthy? Is it cooked in butter or heavy cream? A lamb stew with beans and/or whole grains and vegetables needn’t be unhealthy, I would have thought.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:32 am
I agree with everyone else.
Now go eat your brussel sprouts or no ragu for you. If you eat your high fiber veggies you’ll end up eating a lot less of your lamb ragu. You’ll also feel full a lot longer.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:34 am
What #5 said.
Reducing your fat and calorie intake is not equivalent to good health. It’s a part of health, but nowhere near the whole. And if you adopt it at the expense of other aspects of health, you run the risk of a gamut of other maladies.
You’re not a swimsuit model. You’re 20 years away from a risk of heart disease. A balanced diet and an exercise routine will do far more to serve you in the future than calorie counting
April 16th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I suggest that the presence on the menu of a salad (something that is stereotyped as not tasting good) boosts the salience of taste as a criterion for food selection. Chicken nuggets and a baked potato seem much closer to french fries than to a salad on the health scale, so people who might be inclined toward the nuggets or baked potato in part because they seem healthier now note that french fries are practically the same when you compare everything to a salad, so taste gains salience and healthiness declines. (This assumes that french fries are generally acknowledged to be better tasting than baked potatoes and chicken nuggets.)
Most people judge things based on a relative rather than an absolute scale. That’s an important thing to keep in my when you are trying to persuade people.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:36 am
This study could have been done exclusively at Chick-fil-a which features a carrot and raisin salad. I’ve got to imagine that fries are about the only real option for people at Chick-fil-A
April 16th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I’m not buying any of 1, 3, or 4 – while blogs may have taught us that many of our compatriots are petty children who will cut off their nose to spite their faces, it seems unlikely to be common enough to have this effect in a study. And I can’t imagine the presence of lettuce in a restaurant tricking someone into thinking fried potatoes are somehow healthy.
What seems much more likely to me is that when someone looks at a menu that includes salad, they consider ordering salad, but end up with the fries because next time they’ll get the healthy choice. Repeat, more or less forever.
Also, pickabone at 5 gets it exactly right.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Ha. I’m still thin as I approach 60 and eat what I want. My blood pressure is low. My cholesterol levels are like a new born’s. Lightning bolts, falling pianos and safes, terrorist attacks, and bus accidents are in the normal risk range, though.
It used to be just Americans were stupid about food. The rest of the world is falling in line with us. Even the French, I understand. Their young ijuts prefer crap food to baguettes from the local boulangerie etc.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Waah! Pickabone #5 basically said what some of what I said but a lot better. We learn.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Michael Pollan describes the presence of processed salad menu options at places like McDonald’s as “denying the denier”–that is, you have the very presence of a salad on the menu as a way to overcome the resistance of the family member or friend who doesn’t like the food at the place to begin with. Perhaps, once in the restaurant and having already given in once, people are more likely to go along with the flow (and actually looking at what passes for salad might speed the process as well).
April 16th, 2009 at 11:46 am
My guess is that the presence of salad on the menu opens the mental door to getting a side-order. And then, insidiously, once the door is open, you decide that you may as well have a side-order you actually like. Maybe it’s easier to picture with dessert? Let’s say a restaurant offered only chocolate cake for dessert. You’d probably finish dinner and say, “What am I, a pig? I’m not getting chocolate cake.” But if they offered chocolate cake or a bowl of strawberries, you might say, “Well, I’ll have a look at the dessert menu, it can’t hurt.” And, having taken a look, that chocolate cake suddenly has a serious foothold in your imagination.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I just read this to my husband, who immediately said, “Sure, that makes sense.” When I asked why: “Because I really, really don’t want a McDonald’s salad. I see that, and it makes me think of what I’d rather have instead, which is fries.”
April 16th, 2009 at 11:58 am
“When you consider the healthy option, you say, well, I could have that option.That lowers your guard, leading to self-indulgent behavior.”
Yea, but if there is no healthy option you are not going to consider a healthy option. It’s not like people go to a fast food restaurant looking for a super healthy meal. They go to enjoy some self-indulgent behavoir.
This reminds me of that post on Jonah Lehrer’s blog where he psoted some studies done on mice that showed that drinking diet soda could lead to weight gain. Which is absurd.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I had a roommate in college, an intelligent fellow to boot, that would eat McDonalds and chase it with a slim fast. I tried explaining to him that he’s just adding calories, but he told me to shut up
April 16th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Pickabone at #5 is basically right.
The only thing I’d add to that comment is that the idea of “satiation” in food intake is not fixed. Matthew could be satiated with just the ragu, or with some ragu and some sprouts, or with all of both. In terms of fat intake, eating just some of the ragu and some sprouts would likely be best. But what is that actual outcome here? Probably that he will eat both all of the ragu and all of the sprouts.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
As an overweight person, if in fact the salad on the McDonald’s menu makes people order more french fries, I would guess that the reason is if you just see the french fries you might wonder to yourself “is there a healthier option…”. With the salad on the menu, you might be able to complete that thought by thinking “There is a healthier option, and the better taste of french fries are of sufficiently higher value to me to forego the healthier, but less tasty option”
(My opinions on the relative taste of french fries and salad are just solely opinions, and not necessarily my opinion, just for purposes of example).
April 16th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
My theory is that the presence of a healthy salad permits the following thought process: “If I come into McDonald’s twice a week, then I can have a healthy choice one time and a non-healthy choice one time, and over time it will balance out. Today I will choose the non-healthy choice.”
Absent a salad, you are balancing the unhealthy choice against nothing.
It is essentially the same point as adding the vegetables to the lamb ragu, but over time instead of in a single meal.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
They see the salad and think if I pass up this opportunity to consume as much fat as possible then I will have to resort to eating lettuce.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I think everyone needs to read “In Defense of Food” – though it looks like a lot of commenters here already have or at least have managed somehow to absorb the lessons of the book without having read it. Lamb ragu is probably pretty good for you – depending in part on the quality of the ingredients. But lamb ragu with brussel sprouts is probably even better for you.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
The calories aren’t negated by adding a side of vegetables, but vegetables don’t add many calories and they supplement the nutritional benefit of whatever you’re eating.
I don’t think this is what Nestle was talking about when she was discussing the “health aura”.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
As the great (and tragic) Gazza said, after being photographed at 2am holding a kebab:
“It had salad on it!”
April 16th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
On the topic of reducing calories and fat not being the same thing as choosing healthier food:
I lost 60 lbs five years ago and have kept it off ever since (this makes me somewhat a statistical rarity). I lost this weight by putting myself on strict 1500-1800 calorie diet (amounts adjusted for the amount of running, swimming and biking I did that week) and writing down everything I ate for a year and a half. I kept it in a computer program which also tracked fats/proteins/carbs, vitamins, minerals. You could see very specifically how many of your nutritional needs where being met, and could adjust your diet accordingly.
In my experience this sort of diet is an excellent school for teaching healthy eating habits. Why? Because the sort of food that allows you to go through the day on 1500 calories without being nauseatingly hungry and tired is the good stuff – vegetables, lean meats, fruit, whole grains. The other reason is that seeing everything that you eat in a computer program has the same effect on changing nutritional habits as writing down everything you eat has on adjusting your portion sizes (trust me, being forced to measure everything you eat is very sobering). Over the course of that first year I learned to prepare much healthier food, learned a heck of a lot about nutrition, and never ate at a restaurant which did not provide nutritional and caloric information.
Because of all the healthy eating habits I was forced to learn, I don’t find it that hard to maintain the weight loss. But being forced to live off a restricted caloric diet changed my ways much more radically than any amount of nutrition education has ever accomplished. It’s not information – as human beings we are extraordinarily good at ignoring and justifying our own behaviors – we use that information as a weapon. It’s setting up a whole new set of habits which are at first quite painful, and then become the new routine.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
@Matilde:
I heard that about McDonald’s salads too and as someone who’s eaten them before, I wanted to check it out. The McDonald’s websites segments nutrition info on different pages so it’s harder to compare their items (clever) so I made a spreadsheet (I used the full-fat dressings in my calculations). To me, at least, it looks like you’re better off getting a salad than a Quarter Pounder or a Big Mac: approx. 100 fewer calories, less saturated and trans fat.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Ditto on Pender @#1. Except I would say it’s more than whether the restaurant “believes in” healthy food. If a place is sloppy with its food, has unskilled staff, and doesn’t think too hard about how they put together the items on their menu, they won’t have the wherewithal to make money selling salad, and they won’t be able to cook fries other than by dumping frozen potatoes strips in boiling fat and letting them become disgusting. An establishment that is sufficiently competent to keep fresh, appetizing vegetables, store them, and mix them together sensibly also will probably be able to make french fries that are more than lard-sticks.
(There are exception, natch. Lots of popular franchises sell pretty nasty salads and also nasty fries. But the effect must be strongest when you are somewhere, like a psych experiment, where you don’t have any prior experience of the quality of the food.)
April 16th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
.. you could sell more Fritos just by putting them on the shelf adjacent to something that really is healthy.
Looks like I picked a bad year to invest in Vitamin C-infused Funyuns…
April 16th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
You grab for comfort food, like fries, when you feel bad. And the salad makes you feel bad, ’cause you know you’re not going to buy it.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
@ wondering:
I love a spreadsheet.:) But checking the McDonalds menu, I notice you left off some of the salads (we could be comparing different menus, they vary by geography), including two with crispy chicken that come in at 350 and 380 calories (plus 170 for the dressing = 530-550 calories). There’s your Big Mac.
My point was, I’m just surprised that the researchers used ’salad’ as a healthy option in the experiment. It’s actually possible to make a McDonald’s visit something other than a diet disaster because many of the portions are so small, and they do offer things like grilled chicken sandwiches that aren’t so bad.
For what it’s worth, my advice for travelers or other dieters stranded at a McDonald’s – grilled chicken sandwich, no mayo (about 320 cal) and a small vanilla cone (150 cal). It’s more filling than a salad and will hold you longer.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Caro Matteo Chiese, why would you believe a lamb ragù is unhealthy? Sure, if wolfed down with a half kilo of pasta and quart of plonk it presents a caloric tidal wave to the old system, but in moderation…. If you’re Pollanated, fine, go with grassfed lamb. You could then satisfy both your health and gustatory urges. I recommend a bone-in shoulder from to help you reconnect with humanity. Buon appetito, guaglio’.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
The link should have been Mint Creek Farm
April 16th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Boil those sprouts. Then eat them. In fact there is a “health aura” due to eating healthy food, before you start on the unhealthy food. If you eat a huge gigantic salad while your ragu is simmering, you will end up healthier (in contrast your trash can will be obsese).
Eating the huge salad *after* you eat the ragu will not help you.
I have a hypothesis about the menus. I think that people decide to order say a burger then consider ordering a salad. They think, “hey a salad is healthy I can eat that too.” Then they conclude that they are really hungry, because they have allowed themselves the salad. Then they decide they don’t really want a salad (they never really did, they were just debating with themselves “I’m so hungry I would eat a salad” said the crafty id to the distracted super-ego) but still consider themselves really hungry. So they order the fries.
The key step is imagining the salad in their stomach filling it. Then ceasing to imagine it leaving a hungry void.
E omega fatty acid enriched uhm fecal material on a shelf next to junk food wouldn’t do the trick. People have to think of eating it, then think of not eating it to make themselves feel hungrier.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
@Matilde
Good point. I’ve always gotten the grilled rather than the crispy chicken, plus I was trying to manipulate the data a little to make the salad come off sightly better. Thank you for your reply!
April 16th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
It really does seem that the idea of healthy eating for most people boils down to not getting fat. Too much dietary advice is written with the assumption that people want to lose weight or are worried about weight gain. I’d imagine there are many slim people who don’t have such concerns but would like to hear about the other aspects of a healthy diet.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:32 am
It really does seem that the idea of healthy eating for most people boils down to not getting fat. Too much dietary advice is written with the assumption that people want to lose weight or are worried about weight gain. I’d imagine there are many slim people who don’t have such concerns but would like to hear about the other aspects of a healthy diet.
P.S. – Sorry, forgot to tell you great post!
April 17th, 2009 at 9:30 am
“If I’m reading it right, this new study is saying that you could sell more Fritos just by putting them on the shelf adjacent to something that really is healthy.”
Crucially, no.
Fast food retailing is a very different beast than supermarket retailing. You can’t graft things like “people are more likely to order fries off a menu that includes a salad” onto the supermarket shelf. The psychologies and incentives facing people browsing supermarket shelves just aren’t similar to those facing someone standing at a fast food register.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Also, add me to the list of people who think that while I love me some Chicago-school iconoclasm, you’re going a bit far in implying that:
1) Chicago school economists don’t understand that a substantial portion of buyer and seller behavior is not rational according to their model
and
2) that other people, or other types of economists, have this aspect of economic behavior more or less figured out.
The central problem with “irrational” behavior (in economics “irrational” just means the behavior doesn’t fit the model) has always been hard to deal with because sort of by definition your model doesn’t account for it.
The question then becomes, is this irrational behavior important enough or widespread enough to actually BREAK your model and lead you to conclusions and predictions that don’t comport with reality?
Traditionally we dealt with this problem by “assuming a can opener” – basically you say “since we can’t model this behavior, we aren’t interested in it and we assume it doesn’t break the model.”
Recently many economists have started to become more and more convinced that we can’t get by with this assumption – we need ways of understanding irrational behavior better if we’re going to properly contain its distorting affects on outcomes.
No one really has the answer yet – not Chicago school economists, not Krugman, not Stiglitz, not Taleb, not Roubini. Nobody. Perhaps the Chicago-schoolers are a bit behind on recognizing the need for updated models, but they certainly aren’t alone in being caught with their pants down on this.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I think this phenomenon makes sense if you think of a fast food restaurant as a carnival–a fast food restaurant is like a carnival in that when you go in there, you are not going in there for healthy food, or food you feel like you could make at home. When you go to the carnival, you want decadence. You want a funnel cake, or a bucket of fries, or a cheese steak. Try being the vendor with the healthy food at a carnival or festival food court, and you’ll be the broke vendor that day. Even the people at the festival who would like and normally eat the healthier options you are offering will instead go to the booth next door for the giant kielbasa or BBQ.
Just *being* at the festival puts you in that decadent frame of mind. The presence of a healthy option may simply reinforce your predilection for something decadent. I would even postulate that well before you walked into the door of the fast food restaurant or arrived at the festival you had decadence on your mind, and even *free* healthy options are unlike you to sway you.
In this light, I think the behavior is very rational. To really see what’s going on, I think you’d to set up these experiments in various contexts, not just in fast food restaurants.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
[...] Yglesias notes a new study showing that the mere presence of a salad on a fast-food menu actually makes it more [...]