Taste, Emotion...and Nutrition: Learning From the Analysis of Food Advertising Appeals

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Public health campaigns about the nutritional benefits of healthy foods may be effective in raising awareness and reinforcing people’s knowledge about healthy eating, but they seem to do little to change people’s overall dislike of healthy foods.  In comparison, the overwhelming competition from commercial advertising for unhealthy foods is effective in internalizing the pleasures of eating unhealthy foods, despite people’s knowledge about the negative consequences from unhealthy eating.  Change in people’s dietary behavior is slow at best, and at present, pleasure seems to be a more powerful motivation than knowledge in people’s food consumption. Based on a literature review of consumer behavior regarding food choice, the author argues that the government’s efforts to promote nutrition as a basis of healthy eating may have limited impact on changing people’s dietary behavior. The author turns to commercial food advertising as a source of ideas to address this challenge.  The current study examines the advertising appeals used in food advertisements in two popular magazines.  Based on the findings from the literature review, it is hypothesized that taste appeals will be most frequently found in all food advertisements (H1), nutrition appeals will be found more frequently than emotion appeals in the advertisements for healthy food (H2), and emotion appeals will be found more frequently than nutrition appeals in the advertisements for unhealthy food (H3).  

Methods:  A total of 276 food advertisements were analyzed from 12 issues of Ebony and 12 issues of People magazine from January to December 2008. Each ad was coded for food category and up to two dominant advertising appeals.  Thirteen food categories and twelve advertising appeals were used in the coding process.

Results:  Results show that taste (39%), emotion (26%), and nutrition (16%) represent the three dominant advertising appeals (H1 supported).  For healthy foods (soup, breakfast, pasta/grain, fruits/vegetables, and dairy products), taste appeals are most frequently found (36%), while the nutrition appeals (27%) are used slightly more frequently than are the emotional appeals (21%) (H2 supported). For unhealthy foods (alcohol, snack, fast food, sweets, and processed meats), taste appeals (42%) are dominant, followed by emotional appeals (26%), and nutrition appeals (13%) (H3 supported). 

Conclusions:  Food advertisers appear to use advertising appeals that are consistent with consumers’ true motivations in food choices, focusing on taste and emotion. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  Promoting healthy eating may be more effective when taste and emotion are used as primary message appeals and nutrition is used as a secondary appeal.  Also, for the purpose of changing consumers' perceptions about healthy eating, these message appeals may be more effective if delivered as advertising by the producers of healthy foods instead of through public service announcements from government agencies, which may suffer from the existing perception of being overly educational in their tone.