Can simply naming vegetables differently increase healthful eating?
How do you encourage people to eat their greens? A new study shows that naming vegetable dishes with adjectives that promote their flavor increases positive thinking about healthful eating.
For some, a healthful diet means having to tolerate eating bland tasting, unsatisfying foods, which can seem like a punishment rather than an enjoyable eating experience.
New research, appearing in the journal Psychological Science, shows that giving healthful dishes a more enticing description can significantly increase the uptake of healthful options.
In the long term, this means that people are more likely to maintain good eating habits, leading to a sustainable, healthful diet and a better quality of life.
Using previous research findings
A few years ago, researchers from the University of Stanford, CA, teamed up with Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises to trial a new approach to healthful eating.
They removed the adjectives that described unhealthful foods and devised a system of naming healthful foods according to the flavors in the dish.
For example, they used "twisted citrus glazed carrots" to make carrots sound tastier to eat, believing that most people prioritize tastiness over healthfulness in the moment of choice.
From this experiment, the researchers learned that decadent-sounding food labels encouraged people to eat vegetables more frequently than if these same foods had neutral or health-focused names. They published the results from this initial study in 2017.
