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Psych Yourself Into Buying Healthier Food

2 years ago

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People who shop at the supermarket often have two rules that they swear by: shop the perimeter, where the fresh produce is stashed, and never go to the grocery store hungry. Now, a series of new studies adds a third rule: eat an apple before you shop. People who did so bought 25% more fruits and vegetables than those who didn’t, according to the research published in the journal Psychology & Marketing. “Having a little healthy snack before you shop—as long as it’s something that you really think of as a healthy snack—can change your choices,” says study author Aner Tal, PhD, a research associate at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab.
 
Tal and his team gave a group of 120 shoppers a small snack before they went shopping: either an apple slice or a piece of cookie and a third control group didn’t get a snack. After analyzing their groceries, they found that people who were given the apple slice bought 28% more fruits and vegetables than people who ate the cookie. They also bought 25% more fruits and vegetables than the control group.
supermarket
 
Apples are an excellent source of healthy nutrients, but the researchers don’t credit the apples’ nutritional content for the healthier choices that followed. Eating a pre-shopping snack that people merely perceived as healthy—even if it wasn’t—was enough to make people choose healthier foods. In a follow up study, shoppers were given chocolate milk described as either healthy and wholesome, or rich and heavy. Though the milk was the same, those who were made to believe that the milk was healthy chose healthier foods during their virtual shopping trips.
 
“Anything that puts you in a healthy mindset, whether it’s actually a health food or not, can change your mind to healthier choices,” Tal says. Though more research is needed, he suspects that you might not even have to physically eat something to get the health-priming benefits; just being near them could help you choose better food. It’s why Tal recommends starting every trip in the healthy section of the supermarket – and ditching that delicious-looking cookie before you hit the food shelves.

 

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Binge eater by day and binge watcher by night, Ankita is fluent in food, film, and Internet. When she’s not obsessing over the hottest trends, tacos, and the perfect author’s bio, you can find her under a pile of Jeffery Archer’s novels or looking for the nearest wine shop.