Designing Diets: How Market Forces Shape Food Choices and Public Health

Thaler and Sunstein (2008) coined the term Choice Architecture to describe the practice of influencing consumer choice by organizing the context in which they make decisions. By subtly shaping how options are presented, Choice Architecture influences individual decision-making, often without the consumer’s explicit awareness. Commercial marketers have used the concepts of choice architecture and libertarian paternalism to maximize their gains. Often at the expense of consumer’s health or wellness.
Let us take the example of food – the most basic need of human beings. Marketers have tinkered with the three key choice attributes – hunger, taste and convenience to influence consumer decisions. Advertisements with images of delicious looking foods are used to evoke craving for these foods. Marketers have relied heavily on sugar, salt, oil (fat) and condiments to make the food tastier. Some have gone a step ahead to play on other sensorial attributes like the smell, fragrance and color to make their brands the default choice of unsuspecting consumers. The third attribute of convenience has led to emergence of a new category of foods called ‘junk food’. These foods are very convenient to have because you just have to open the pack and start eating, or at best boil/heat for a few minutes, saving you the effort of cleaning, cutting, chopping and cooking. What more can a time strapped consumer ask for – except that these foods have zero or very low nutritional value due to host of processes and preservatives added to them. Over the years noodles have become the default choice of breakfast/lunch packs of children, burgers, fries, pizzas and sodas have become the default choice for weekend eating out, and chips, kurkure, cookies and chocolates have become the default choices for snacking in between meals. This includes beverages sold as ‘fruit juices, smoothies and energy drinks’ with high content of added sugar.
And the effects of this are becoming visible as health surveys continue to show micronutrient deficiencies among different segments, increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases at very young ages, and trends that show rising morbidity and mortality from reasons that are fully preventable. The trend is fast catching up in semi-urban and rural areas – every time I travel to far flung and remote villages, the display of chips, cookies, chocolates, sodas and energy drinks is unmissable in rural outlets.
Here is an opportunity for responsible corporates to use behavioral science, advertising and marketing principles to offer consumers products and brands with high nutritional value. Can we not manufacture and market healthier and nutritious foods to consumers, and use the above principles to fight health crises like Iron Deficiency Anemia among children, adolescents, pregnant women, lactating women and other vulnerable segments?