Is this food healthy? The impact of lay beliefs and contextual cues on food healthiness perception and consumption

Abstract

Is this food healthy? Understanding how individuals evaluate food healthiness is important because their evaluation can affect their food choices and consumption quantities, potentially leading to obesity and other health problems. However, individuals often find it difficult to process the health information to evaluate food healthiness, so they rely on their intuition or lay beliefs to make the judgment. This article reviews recent empirical findings to highlight how individuals use lay beliefs based on sensory cues (e.g., visual, taste) and cognitive cues (e.g., nutrition label, price) to infer food healthiness and how this perception of food healthiness affects their food consumption. We conclude by discussing possible future opportunities in lay beliefs and food perception.