Claims on food labels that a product is organic, locally produced or made by workers subject to fair labor practices may mislead consumers into thinking that such foods are low in calories, a U-M researcher says.
“Social ethics claims on food packaging can promote the misperception that foods are lower-calorie and therefore appropriate for greater consumption,” says Norbert Schwarz, professor of marketing at the Michigan Ross School of Business; Charles Horton Cooley Collegiate Professor of Psychology and professor of psychology, LSA; and research professor, Institute for Social Research and the Program in Survey Methodology. “As rates of overweight and obesity have reached record levels, advertising claims have become more common on the fronts of food packaging, fueling concerns that they may lead consumers to see foods as healthier than they really are.”
Schwarz and colleagues Jonathon Schuldt of California State University-Northridge and Dominique Muller of the University of Grenoble in France conducted two studies to see if ethical claims on food packaging, such as fair trade (where workers receive just compensation for their work), exhibit the same “halo” effect as those of other food claims (foods low in fat or cholesterol or high in fiber are often misperceived as low in calories).
“In contrast to relative nutrition claims, such as low-fat, which have received the bulk of research attention to date, it has been less clear whether ethics claims affect nutrient inferences,” says Schuldt, assistant professor of psychology at Cal State-Northridge. “However, building on the classic halo effect in social psychology and past work demonstrating health halos from relative nutrition claims, we demonstrate that a company’s ethical actions — which logically bear little upon the nutrient content of its products — can nevertheless influence perceivers’ nutrient and health-related inferences about food products.”
Researchers found that a fictional brand of chocolate was judged as significantly lower-calorie when it was described as fair trade.
In the first study, some participants were told that a hypothetical company pays cocoa farmers 50 percent more than the standard market price for cocoa, while other participants were told that the farmers receive less-than-fair price. In the second study, some participants were told that the company offers excellent wages and health care to employees of its cocoa suppliers in West Africa, as well as donates far more to local charities than do other companies. Other participants were told the opposite or nothing at all about the company’s labor practices.
In both studies, the researchers found that not only was fair trade perceived as lower-calorie, but that the effect is not restricted to the fair trade advertising claim — among those participants with strong ethical food values, the chocolate also was judged as lower-calorie when a company is described as treating its workers ethically as compared to unethically.
