Next time you grab a package off the grocery store shelf thinking it looks like a healthful choice, take a beat before you toss it into your cart. The better-for-you allure of it could be as superficial as the wrapper itself. From print color to bottle shape, specific package design elements can have a real influence on the perceived health benefits of the food inside.
But unlike explicit written nutrition claims such as “low sodium,” which are subject to strict governmental regulation, the implied health messages of package design are entirely up to the manufacturer. While design techniques are often used fairly to communicate the presence of a more healthful product, they are also sometimes employed in misleading ways. Keep an eye out for these tricks of the trade to avoid being duped by a product with a deceptively healthful veneer.
Thin, shapely containers
It’s no accident that many packaged lower-calorie drinks such as skinny margaritas and flavored sparkling waters come in thin bottles. That silhouette propels the message that the product is slimming, since research demonstrates that people perceive food and drinks in elongated packages is as less caloric than those in wide packages. And when a thin container also has a curviness to it, with an indented “waist” (a concave shape), the product inside is perceived as healthier, particularly by women who have a high body mass index, according to a recent study published in the journal Food Quality and Preference. Such a container may actually hold a better-for-you, lower-calorie option, but it could also serve as an unwarranted health halo on a drink you’d be better off avoiding.
Images of fields, farms, grains, produce
The images printed on many packages can reveal more about what the manufacturer wants you to associate with the food than the quality of the food itself. As I browsed the grocery store recently, I saw pictures of whole wheat still in its husk on boxes of crackers made only with refined flour; sketches of garden leaves on bags of coconut sugar, and prominent images of ripe whole fruit and vegetables on snack bars and puffs that contain more sugar than produce on the ingredient list, and the produce was in powdered form at that. Pictures on packages can be powerful unconscious cues, connoting unprocessed, farm-fresh, natural foods that are flush with healthful properties. Very often the ingredient list tells a different story.