Spicy curry with delicious vegetables: can indulgent framing encourage healthy eating in the Netherlands?

Abstract

Previous studies showed the increase of obese patients in Western civilisations, including in the Netherlands. One reason that could explain the increase of obese patients is the intuition of unhealthy food being considered tastier, while people think healthy food to be less tasty. While Americans were shown to believe this inverse relationship between the healthiness and the tastiness, in France this relation was shown not to work inversely but positively. The existing research suggests culture may play a role, however, the results are conflicting and, for that reason, cannot be generalised to other countries. Therefore, in this experiment, the Netherlands will be investigated to see whether language can be used to influence the perceptions of tastiness and the purchase intention of healthy food. In this study, 191 participants rated three healthy and three unhealthy food advertisements accompanied with a description, focussing on the taste or the healthiness.