When you’re in the fruit section of your favorite supermarket, do you automatically go for the prettiest looking apples and bananas? Or do you have some other criteria?
A recent study found that people tend to believe that aesthetically pleasing food is healthier. In practice, this is a part of a big problem where huge amounts of perishable foods are discarded day after day.
Researcher Linda Hagen, Ph.D., who works at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California found that the participants see food as more “natural” when it follows the classic aesthetic principles like symmetry, order, and balance.
Another problem this bias creates is that people can easily perceive unhealthy food as healthy when it’s photographed to look pretty. This is used to market fast food and other unhealthy choices to people not as indulgence, but as healthy choices that are good for them.
The study participants also believed that pretty looking food is fresher, safer, lower in calories, better prepared, and that it has higher quality ingredients.
Think about this the next time you go grocery shopping and keep in mind that your brain is sometimes playing tricks on you!
