title: Healthy dining. Subtle diet reminders at the point of purchase increase low-calorie food choices among both chronic and current dieters.
abstract: There is a growing consensus that our food-rich living environment contributes to rising numbers of people with overweight and obesity. Low-cost, effective intervention tools are needed to facilitate healthy eating behavior, especially when eating away from home. Therefore, we present a field experiment in a restaurant that tested whether providing subtle environmental diet reminders increases low-calorie food choices among both chronic and current dieters. For half of the participants, the menu was supplemented with diet-related words, as reminders of healthy eating and dieting. We recorded customers' choices of low-calorie or high-calorie items from the menu, and we assessed chronic and current dieting. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that diet reminders increased choices for low-calorie foods, among both chronic and current dieters. After a diet reminder, around half of dieters made a healthy menu choice. This study demonstrates the efficacy of providing subtle diet reminders as a low-cost practical intervention to increase low-calorie food choices among weight-concerned individuals, who are motivated to regulate their eating behavior but have been found to often fail in food-rich environments.
authors.affiliation: Utrecht University, Department of Psychology, Postbus 80140, 3508TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. E.K.Papies@uu.nl
authors.forename: Esther K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Papies
authors.forename: Harm
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Veling
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior; D004032:Diet; D002149:Energy Intake; D004777:Environment; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D005518:Food Preferences; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009426:Netherlands; D009765:Obesity / Q000517:prevention & control; D012147:Restaurants; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires