The calories underestimation of "organic" food: Exploring the impact of implicit evaluations.

The calories underestimation of "organic" food: Exploring the impact of implicit evaluations.
Appetite. 2019 Mar 03;:
Authors: Besson T, Lalot F, Bochard N, Flaudias V, Zerhouni O
Abstract
Specific attributes of a food product can cause it to be spontaneously but wrongly perceived as healthier than it really is (i.e., the health halo effect). Notably, there is preliminary evidence that individuals evaluate organic food as less caloric than regular, non-organic food. However, explanations regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying the health halo effect remain scarce. Drawing from the implicit cognition literature, we hypothesize that this effect could be due to (a) the reactivation in memory of implicit positive evaluations and/or (b) the reactivation of a semantic association between the concepts "organic" and "non-caloric". We first conducted a 2 (Product label: organic versus non-organic) × continuous (Valence-IAT score) × continuous (Calorie-IAT score) study (N = 151) to test these hypotheses, and conducted a conceptual replication in a second study (N = 269). We computed Bayesian analyses alongside frequentist analyses in order to test for potential null hypotheses, as well as frequencies and Bayesian meta-regression including both datasets. Both methods provided consistent results. First, Bayesian analyses yielded extremely strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the organic label leads to an undere...

Source: Appetite - March 2, 2019 Category: Nutrition Authors: Besson T, Lalot F, Bochard N, Flaudias V, Zerhouni O Tags: Appetite Source Type: research