People may use simple heuristics to assess the healthiness of food products. For instance, the information that a product contains "fruit sugar" (in German, "fruit sugar" is the colloquial term for fructose) could be interpreted as a cue that the product is relatively healthy, since the term "fruit" symbolizes healthiness. This can have a misleading effect on the perceived healthiness of a product. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 164) were asked to evaluate the healthiness of one of two breakfast cereals based on the information provided in a nutrition table. For one group, the label "fruit sugar" was used; for the other, the label "sugar" was used. Results suggest that the phrase "fruit sugar" listed as an ingredient of the breakfast cereal resulted in a more positive perception of the healthiness of the cereal compared with the ingredient labeled "sugar." In Experiment 2 (N = 202), the results of Experiment 1 were replicated with a within-subjects design in which participants evaluated the two products simultaneously. Experiment 3 (N = 251) ruled out the alternative explanation that the effect could be due to differing inferences about the product's ingredients based on the label used, that is, that the product labeled with "fruit sugar" contains fruit. Finally, in Experiment 4 (N = 162), the results show that the healthiness associated with the labeling of the ingredient "sugar" ("fruit sugar" vs. "sugar") mediates the observed effect. Results of the four experiments indicate that symbolic information is an important factor that can influence people's health perceptions of food. These findings have implications for marketing and public health.
Keywords: Fructose; Fruit sugar; Health halo effect; Health perception; Heuristics; Symbolic information.
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