Healthy food or Healthy sales?

Hello everyone again!

Today I would like to write about a very important topic that nowadays we seem not to pay much attention at: Healthy Food and the promotion of Organic Food. Many companies and brands enter the food market by advertising and promoting healthy food lifestyles and products due to the increasing number of eating disorders that affect our population. However, by researching more in depth I found out that all the promotions of healthy products and organic food are not always so beneficial for the population. In fact, according to the Dieter’s Paradox people erroneously believe that eating healthy foods in addition to unhealthy ones can decrease a meal’s calorie count. In this research paper subjects were shown four different meals and asked to estimate each meal’s calorie content. Some of the participants (n= 457) were shown a series of relatively unhealthy meals, and others (n = 477) were shown the same meals combined with a healthy option. Results of this study shown that due to the fact that people believe that healthy food have less calories, then they are more inclined to eat more of it. This study examined how consumers’ beliefs that adding a healthy option to a meal is likely to decrease this meal’s calorie content can actually influence their weight management. Moreover, it demonstrates that those most concerned with managing their weight are also most likely to underestimate the calorie content of meals containing both healthy and unhealthy items.

However, from a marketing point of view, advertising campaigns and especially front of packaging have been found to play a very important role in terms of increasing the sales of a specific product or brand. For example, the recent Iceland advertisement regarding the elimination of palm oil from all of their own label products has made people talk about it on social media and radio due to its strong message.

Nowadays, more and more people demand about organic food, food without any chemicals added or colourants and preservatives because of the increasing awareness about the problems that can be caused by an unhealthy alimentation. However, due to the increasing demand and the difficulty in complying with the regulations in terms of organic food, suppliers had to increase the costs of those products. Price remain therefore a barrier for many consumers, but it is possible that its significance could be diminished in the moment when consumers will be more aware of the reasons behind the higher price and convinced themselves that organic food is a value for money choice despite the high costs. The importance of motives and barriers appears to vary between different product categories and future research should focus on product segmentation. This explain the gap between the attitudes that people have towards organic food and the actual behaviour of buying organic food. For example in the study conducted by Padel(2005) they found that a large amount of people state that they would buy organic food and they would change their usually consumed products with alternatives that use no palm oil or no artificial ingredients but in fact the amount of people that actually buy those products and brands is very limited.

In conclusion, promoting healthy food is not only beneficial for the entire population that can be made aware of the risks of an unhealthy diet, but it can also be beneficial for food companies and  brands in order to stand out by promoting healthy food and products eco friendly.

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