Based on the findings demonstrating compensation between mental effort and subsequent food consumption, this article focuses on the compensatory mechanism between thinking about physical activity and food intake. Results from a field experiment indicate that simply reading about physical activity leads participants to compensate by serving themselves more snacks. The amount of snacks served was mediated by biased calorie estimation. Additionally, we also manipulated the way physical activity was perceived (as tiring exercise or as a fun activity). Although results suggest extra consumption when exercise is perceived as tiring, differences were not statistically significant.

In order to combat rising rates of obesity, researchers from a variety of disciplines seek to understand its underlying causes. This research suggests that an interaction—between a cognitive style, context dependence, and the eating environment—may be a powerful influence on eating behaviors. Context dependence is the capacity of an individual to overcome embedding contexts in perception (Witkin et al. 1954) which may make some consumers more susceptible to environmental cues and therefore less able to capitalize on their dietary restraint motivation. This may lead to discouraging outcomes, increased self-blame, and ultimately diet dropout. The study consists of a 2 × 2 ANOVA between-subjects design conducted on Amazon mTurk where both context dependence (context dependent vs. context independent) and exemplar plate (present vs. absent) were manipulated. Because participants were responding online, serving intentions were used as the dependent variable in lieu of actual serving behavior. Participants were asked how many pretzels they would take in their given scenario on a sliding scale (1–100). A manipulation check was done to ensure the social nature of the exemplar cue. Analysis of variance revealed a significant interaction between context dependence and exemplar (F(1,110) = 4.15, p < .05). People in the context-dependent condition served themselves almost double when the exemplar plate was present versus absent (M = 16.67 vs. M = 9.07; t(53) = −2.16, p < .05). In the context-independent condition, these differences were negligible for the present versus absent conditions (M = 8.17 vs. M = 8.46, t(54) = .001, p = .999) which provide support for hypothesis 1. For a summary of results. The manipulation check confirmed the social nature of the cue (t(109) = 1.59, p < .05). This research demonstrates the viability of exploringthe context dependence in consumer behavior contexts. Results show that context-dependent people, especially in countries such as America with high-consumption environmental cues, may be more susceptible to overeating and obesity. This reaffirms the need for alterations to the eating environments and choice structures through means such as nudging to improve the ability of context-dependent consumers to make healthy decisions.

Grocery shoppers face time and attention constraints when shopping that may contribute to decreased purchase and consumption of fruits and vegetables. We created and tested a healthy checkout strategy that made fruits and vegetables both convenient and salient. Specifically, cashiers were trained to suggestive sell pre-packaged, convenient, low-cost, pairs of fruits or vegetables located at the checkout aisle end-cap. Overall and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participant purchases of targeted fruits and vegetables significantly increased within treatment stores and between the treatment stores relative to the control store. A significant decreasing trend in overall produce sales in the control store was found, but not for treatment stores. Further pilot testing of healthy checkout strategies is needed to provide additional evidence of efficacy and to understand better how economically sustainable these strategies are for retailers.

across WIC food packages to a maximum amount of 64 fluid oz/mo in all packages, except for the package for postpartum women, where the recommendation was to eliminate juice. Moreover, the committee also recommended that the US Department of Agriculture permit WIC participants to elect to receive an additional $3.00 in their cash value voucher instead of juice. This option is cost-neutral and responds to recommendations3,4 that, as a general practice, fruit should be consumed as whole fruit instead of juice. This option also provides autonomy to WIC participants to meet their personal preferences for juice compared with whole fruit. In summary, the US Department of Agriculture has received recommendations for the contents of the WIC food packages from an expert committee appointed for this purpose. Their proposed recommendations reduce but do not eliminate (except for postpartum women) juice from the food packages. Furthermore, a new option, to exchange the voucher for juice with one for an increase in the cash value voucher to purchase whole fruit, was proposed.

Summary This study's purpose was to examine changes in healthy and unhealthy items purchased following the implementation of traffic light and cartoon labelling in a small retail food venue (Café Bay) in a children's hospital in eastern North Carolina. Between October 2015 and March 2016, daily food and beverage sales from Café Bay were obtained during baseline, traffic light labelling, a washout period, cartoon labelling (on healthy foods only) and a final washout period. Pearson chi‐squared tests and multiple linear regressions were used to examine effects of labelling strategies, controlling for the holidays. In unadjusted analyses, traffic light labelling was associated with significant decreases in purchases of unhealthy items purchased, while cartoon labelling was associated with increases in unhealthy items purchased. In adjusted linear regression analysis, traffic light labelling was associated with fewer unhealthy purchases and thus may have potential to decrease the amount of unhealthy items purchased in a children's hospital food retail venue.

Obesity has become an ever-present concern in the modern world, and researchers are concerned with mechanisms that cause obesity. This research seeks to identify one possible cognitive style that affects how consumers process the consumption environment—context dependence—and how it relates to certain consumer’s propensity to overconsume. Context dependence (Witkin 1950) is the psychological tendency to over-rely on the environment to process information. In food environments, context dependence may make some consumers more susceptible to peripheral cues that their behavior is desirable or correct which in turn may lead to overconsumption. This research reaffirms the need for adjustments to the shopping and consumption environment if we are to improve national health. These adjustments, such as pathways to produce departments and shopping cart divisions, have already been shown to increase fruit and vegetable selection in the shopping environment (Payne et al. 2014).

Much is still unknown regarding the reasons that drive consumer consumption intentions for low‐calorie snacks. This research investigates the impact of individuals with low vs. high dietary restraint inferences of low‐calorie snacks on their subsequent consumption intentions. We conducted a between‐subjects experiment in which we asked participants to indicate their consumption intentions and their hedonic and utilitarian value perceptions for more (almonds) vs. less (goldfish crackers) healthy 99‐calorie snacks. In addition, we measured participants' level of dietary restraint. Results suggest that consumers with high vs. low dietary restraint levels do prefer low‐calorie snacks for different reasons. Hedonic value perceptions explain consumers with low dietary restraint preference for the less healthy snack, while utilitarian value perceptions explain consumers with high dietary restraint preference for the healthier snack. We conclude with a discussion on the managerial and policy implications of our findings.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program benefits nutritionally vulnerable populations by providing them with vouchers to buy healthful foods. In the retail sphere, the WIC program faces 2 challenges to maximizing its effectiveness: ensuring a positive retail experience that leads to full redemption of benefit vouchers and controlling food costs paid by the program. Unfavorable retail experiences may result in reductions in WIC benefit redemption, switching to other stores (even if expensive), or program dropout. We find that these WIC customer experiences depend on retailer size, store crowding, employee- customer interactions, and retailers' WIC program management. WIC vendor managers can set normative retailer benchmarks of what is expected for WIC customer experiences resulting in WIC participant retention, thereby nudging underperforming retailers to improve and rewarding already excellent performing retailers.

People compensate for small food-unit sizes by eating more units compared to regular-sized units, but the aggregate of calories people consume of smaller versus regular units is still less because each unit consumed increases perceptions of overindulgence and impulsivity. This suggests that if perceptions of a food unit's smallness could be disrupted, people may not need to compensate, resulting in a further reduction in aggregate food chosen and consumed. In a lab and field experiment, people took the fewest calories when presented with smaller versus regular-sized pizza slices (i.e., from the same pizza pie diameter) placed on a larger table that distracted their attention away from the smallness of the pizza slices. We show that unit-size effects can be altered by food frame-size mechanisms like table diameter.

When marketing researchers perform field experiments, it is crucial that the experimental location and the control location are comparable. At present, it is difficult to assess the comparability of field locations because there is no way to distinguish differences between locations that are due to random versus systematic factors. To accomplish this, we propose a methodology that enables field researchers to evaluate and select optimal field locations by parsing these random versus systematic effects. To determine the accuracy of our proposed methodology, we performed computer simulations with 10,000 cases per simulation. The simulations demonstrate that accuracy increases as the number of data points increases and as consistency increases.

Objective To examine how food store environments can promote healthful eating, including (1) preferences for a variety of behavioral economics strategies to promote healthful food purchases, and (2) the cross-sectional association between the primary food store where participants reported shopping, dietary behaviors, and body mass index. Methods Intercept survey participants (n = 342) from 2 midsized eastern North Carolina communities completed questionnaires regarding preferred behavioral economics strategies, the primary food store at which they shopped, and consumption of fruits, vegetables, and sugary beverages. Results Frequently selected behavioral economic strategies included: (1) a token and reward system for fruit and vegetable purchases; and (2) price discounts on healthful foods and beverages. There was a significant association between the primary food store and consumption of fruits and vegetables (P = .005) and sugary beverages (P = .02). Conclusions and Implications Future studies should examine associations between elements of the in-store food environment, purchases, and consumption.

It is assumed fruits and vegetables (F&V) are infrequently purchased because they are unavailable because of location, price, or quality.1 Yet, F&V availability does not necessarily result in frequent purchases.2 Instead, purchasing patterns may reflect persuasive in-store shopper marketing3 of less healthy foods, resulting in disproportionately smaller F&V spending compared with what is suggested.4 In-store marketing that is salient, provides a behavioral benchmark to which shoppers can compare their in-store behavior, and is easy to interpret could revitalize current attempts to encourage fresh F&V purchases.

•Using social norm-based messaging in grocery carts can increase produce demand.•Shopper marketing nutrition interventions are sustainable for grocery stores.•Shopper marketing nutrition interventions are sustainable for grocery shoppers.

The Journal of the American Medical Association and the National Center for Health Statistics report that 30 percent of adults and 15 percent of adolescents in the United States are obese (Ogden et al. 2002). Such statistics suggest that the prevalence of obesity in America has reached epidemic proportions, threatening to overtake smoking as the leading preventable cause of disease and death (Seiders and Petty 2004). Drawing from Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive framework to understand the etiology of overeating behavior, the current research study simultaneously examines individual and combined effects of advertising, social, and cognitive predictors on overeating behavior in adolescent and adult populations. This research is the first to examine social cognitive influences in both an adolescent and adult population, which allowed an assessment of the robustness of each variable across two different populations, and consequently enhances the external validity of the results. Overall, the results of the analysis suggest that (1) although advertising media alone may have a significant effect on unhealthy overeating behavior, parental influence, peer influence, and selfefficacy beliefs largely neutralize such influence, (2) peer and parental influences strongly predict adolescent unhealthy overeating behavior, but parental influence wanes as individuals reach adulthood, and (3) self-efficacy is the most significant predictor of adolescent and adult unhealthy overeating behavior.