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A study has found that food the looks pretty comes across as healthy to consumers.
This comes as people are bombarded with a copious amount of adverts for food per year – 7,000 images in the US – with much of it fast food.
Now here is the thing. Much the same way humans will find beautiful art enriching, the same effect is had on humans.
Beautiful aesthetics are associated with pleasure and indulgence.
Now there is something else. Most humans do not believe food can be both tasty and healthy. That is why many get surprised when they have a vegan cake ad it tastes almost as good as the the rest of us mortals delight ourselves in.
It gets tense though.
When food is depicted in what we call natural settings, so imagine a succulent fatty food serving in a green environment, you know, nature, it is automatically healthy. Put that food in the environment that seems natural and we are more receiving.
So how did they test it?
Well, they used what is called a classical aesthetic experiment. That is when we look at symmetry, order, and systematic patterns.
A series of foods, in this case avocado toast is put before people with different pictures. Both sets of people read the same ingredients, identical to the tee. One is shown as ugly and the other prettier.
The result.
People who saw the prettier avocado toasts healthier (e.g., healthier, more nutritious, fewer calories) and more natural (e.g., purer, less processed) compared to the ugly version.
And that naturalness came into play quite well.
Why does this matter?
Because the healthiness judgement affects consumer behaviour, so a good advertising campaign will mean food that is no good for one, presented in that environment will have it gobbled up by people.
The study does say the pretty=healthier effect has two things
- Bias can be muted by putting a disclaimer that food has been modified
- And only applies to classical aesthetics so if we have fun shapes and stuff, not so much.
So it is not all doom and gloom, but it can be.
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