Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

When is a Duh not a Duh?

Heather over at Angleweave has another diet-related post that has me saying "yes, but..."

This one concerns the portion-control research done by Brian Wansink at the University of Illinois. Dr. Wansink was a presenter at a recent FDA Obesity Working Group meeting, so having read his research presented there, I thought that the AP article Heather referenced was a little superficial.

I know a lot of people have a negative view of the "food police" types. Wansink isn't from the nutrition and public health arena, though...his degrees are in Business Administration, Journalism & Mass Communications, and Marketing...and his Food & Brand Lab focuses not on what people should be doing but on what they actually do.

And then the food police can use this information to beat people over the head with what they need to change. Personally I'm in favor of this, because (as I explained last time I got on my soapbox) this too-fat-too-inactive habit is getting expensive.

Anyway, back to Wansink's research. It is more than the Duh conclusion that people who eat too much get fat. For example, they studied how people perceived their portions of liquid in short, wide 22-ounce glasses and tall, slender 22-ounce glasses and found that "[p]eople given short wide glasses poured 76% more than those who had randomly been given tall slender glasses. They believed, however, that they had poured less."

Implications?

A wide range of people and institutions would like to better control a person’s consumption of a product. Those in the hospitality industry want to decrease costs (via serving size) without decreasing satisfaction. Those in public policy want to decrease waste. Those in health and dietetics fields want to decrease over-consumption. Those on restricted diets want to decrease calories, fat, or sugar intake. If short, wide glasses encourage people to pour more than tall glasses, the selection of glasses has an impact on costs as well as on calories.

Yet there are circumstances where there is a desire to stimulate an increased consumption of healthy beverages with the undernourished young and old. For instance, a parent may want to encourage their child to pour and drink more milk at home, and a dietician may want nursing home patients to consume more juice in the cafeteria. In these cases, short, wide glasses would encourage more consumption than the narrow six ounce glasses that are often provided.

Very few people are aware of everything they do and why they are doing it. Another of the lab's studies, Buying More: Why Numerical Signs Make You Overspend at the Grocery Store caused me to turn red...I've bought more cans of soup that I needed because they were "three for." Now that I have read this study, I'll be a little more aware of what I'm doing.

Making people aware of the issues like portion control is one thing, but Wansink's presentation to the FDA was interesting because he focused on the idea that the physical packaging (that's the red potato chip idea) might be an effective way to make people aware of what they are eating while they are eating it. In his testimony he said

So structural packaging barriers appear to decrease consumption. Okay, they can decrease consumption, and they might even be profitable. For instance, it might be possible to develop a healthy portion line of package and sort of price it appropriately.

The key is to make people aware of how much they're eating without decreasing their enjoyment in the food. As we know earlier, enjoying food and having it taste good is the number one thing people look for.

So the summary of packaging research is that we can't rely only on label information, because people appear to ignore it. Are there more effective ways it can be presented? Well, we're working on a few different ideas that we hope might be more effective.

We can't rely only on small portions, because people seem to overcompensate when they eat small portions. Well, are there other alternatives to just having small portions?

And the last thing is that structural changes in packaging hold promise. There are lot of other forums, and there may be situations where it does and doesn't work, and that would be the thing to look at next.

I'm a person who has both motivation and time, and I'd still appreciate having food packaged in a way that makes portion contol easier. In fact, I buy some things in less-economical ways (juice boxes, for example, and trail mix) to help make it a no-brainer. I think of people like my sister, who has a demanding job, a long commute, and three kids, and who relies a lot on convenience foods...it isn't that she lacks motivation, but any improvements in labeling and packaging that makes it easier for her to make healthier choices is a big help.

Speaking of labeling...the question of how to label packaged food, and whether to require labels (i.e., nutritional information) for restaurants, is a big one for the folks in public health and industry. I want more information, but I understand the information and how to put into context. A lot of people don't have that context, which I suspect was the point of the paragraph in the AP article:

Wansink and other researchers hope the results can help the federal government devise more user-friendly nutrition labels for packaged foods. For example, instead of stating that a handful of granola has 200 calories, the label instead could say the consumer would have to walk 2 miles to burn it off.

Another speaker at the FDA meeting was Susan Borra from the International Food Information Council, an industry-funded organization I mentioned in a previous post. She discussed the reasons for putting some context on nutrition labels:

[W]e talked about information needs, and consumers are feeling overwhelmed and bombarded with information. They actually told us, I think we know what we're supposed to do. I have information that I know I'm supposed to eat better. I know I'm supposed to get more physical activity. But I'm not doing it, so please help me get to that point. And it's things like motivation, helping them [get] the tools, the how-to's, versus just general information; and they said that they would hopefully then be able to do it in both terms of nutrition and physical activity. ...

So, in this need for consumer research, what are some of the questions that we need to look at? How do consumers, how do they actually really utilize calorie information on a food label? Do they understand this concept of energy balance or does energy balance understanding really help them in any way? Can calorie information on a food label, can it impact behavior? Will it help them improve their caloric intake? Are there ways to more effectively communicate calories in the context of single-serving, multi-serving packages that makes more sense for consumers? And then what messages about calorie and serving size would be truly motivational, not just informational, helping them to bridge the gap between what they know and what they're doing.

I don't argue with Heather just for the sake of arguing...actually, Heather is a rare Reasonable Person, and if everyone took care of themselves like she does, I'd be looking for another line of work. But she and I have different perspectives on a few things, and that's what caused me to go off at such length this morning.

The popular press is not the best place to get solid health information. It's a good way to steer you toward research, but take the conclusions presented in a popular press article with a big grain of salt. And when you read the actual research, check to see who paid the bills.

And finally, I guess it is my 2004 goal to try to get people to recognize that public health issues like obesity, smoking, and seat belts aren't just mere matters of free choice vs. big government intrusion, there are serious economic consequences of poor health.

Posted by Nic at January 3, 2004 01:22 AM | TrackBack