586645 research-article2015
RSH0010.1177/1757913915586645Current topics & opinionsCurrent topics & opinions
Current topics & opinions
How storytelling can bias sensory perceptions among young students Healthy foods are often stigmatised by a reputation of being tasteless and boring. Getting people to eat healthily is a global challenge that will have a great impact in generations to come. Laurits Rohden Skov from the research cluster on Public Health Nutrition at Aalborg University, Denmark, and Armando Pérez-Cueto, Associate Professor at the Department of Food Science at University of Copenhagen, discuss the influence of storytelling on the likeability and perceived quality of foods among university students as a proxy for promoting healthy dietary habits. today with the expanding influence of The healthy dietary habits of young people in developed countries have been social media, the stories are more efficient and spread with snowball speed. on a downward slope ever since the Earlier this year, Forbes presented a list home-cooked meal was replaced with of ‘5 secrets to use storytelling for brand eating out. Today, young people are marketing success’.5 The first, second increasingly experiencing food-related disease at a younger age than society and third items on this list are secrets has been used to, with rates of obesity, that are directly transferable to a context type 2 diabetes and elevated blood where the aim is to promote healthy food pressure reaching new heights every choices. For all health messages, it is year. The promising news is that these important to speak truthfully and diseases are preventable transparently, as most through sustained healthy healthy eating campaigns For all health dietary behaviour – have done thus far, and messages, it is infuse personalities into behaviour that furthermore important to can be taken into stories, which health speak truthfully professionals might not be adulthood and can create and healthy habits for life. used to. For effective transparently At the research cluster storytelling it is important on Public Health Nutrition that it is not the health at Aalborg University, professional talking, but a interest has been directed into the human who simplifies a somewhat determinants of food choice at point of complicated and important message. purchase. It is widely acknowledged that Infusing a personality into a health the reasons for food choices are complex message can be challenging for health and multiple, but experts suggest that professionals, but it may be very the effect of emotions,1,2 reflective and effective. Role models have been automatic cognitive processing systems3 traditionally used in brand marketing as well as in health promotion campaigns, and habits4 are strong determinants for hence a health professional or food why we eat as we do. This knowledge service provider could consider creating has been utilised by the food, drink and characters in their stories that their retail industry for many years, but why intended audience will root for. We all have we, public health professionals, neglected using some of the same tools? can recall the effect that Popeye had on Social marketers have used storytelling the intake of spinach. This principle inspired a study at The Food and Brand for brand marketing for a long time, but
174 Perspectives in Public Health l July 2015 Vol 135 No 4
Lab at Cornell University in 2012, where they created an identity associated with vegetables that the target group could relate to. They renamed carrots as ‘X-Ray Vision Carrots’ and broccoli as ‘Power Punch Broccoli’ in a self-serve school canteen.6 Children want to have x-ray vision and be as super strong as the cartoon characters and superheroes that they identify with and root for on TV and the Internet. The study showed an increase in intake of certain vegetables by up to 99% and later a prolonged effect of around 16% when compared to a control group. Although there was no cost effectiveness study carried out, this study has hardly cost anything for the school, the parents or the municipality. Stories aimed at adults are a bit different. Even though some of us might dream of super powers, we rather endeavour to achieve a certain identity or lifestyle that we would like to be associated with, or to a greater extent, want others to associate us with. This can be referred to as the social desirability bias. A study involving 140 cafeteria customers showed that descriptive names for served foods, such as ‘Traditional Cajun Red Beans with Rice’ instead of ‘Red Beans with Rice’ and ‘Succulent Italian Seafood Filet’ instead of ‘Seafood Filet’ enhanced the perception of the food as well as how it tasted.7 Similarly, research has shown that pork is rated higher in taste, tenderness, juiciness and overall acceptability if it is labelled free range or organic.8 The aim of the research presented here was to investigate how a designed story might affect the sensory perception of a simple staple food in the Danish diet – bread. Therefore, 59 students of nonfood studies were invited into a Foodscape lab for a sensory test.
Copyright © Royal Society for Public Health 2015 SAGE Publications Downloaded from rsh.sagepub.com at UNIV ARIZONA LIBRARY on September 2015 ISSN6, 1757-9139 DOI: 10.1177/1757913915586645
Current topic & opinion Figure 1 The self-reported liking, colour and crispness of bread, bread with a label and bread with a story
The Foodscape lab is a brand new facility for the study of behavioural aspects of food choices and is equipped with sophisticated instruments and software to monitor study participants and collect data. This is a versatile facility that can also be used for sensory testing. During the experiment, participants were first served a piece of bread and asked to rate it on a 9-point Likert scale according to various sensory variables. Then, they were served another piece of bread labelled either organic or wholegrain. Finally, they received a piece of bread with an added story about: the sort of grain, the farm it came from and the Danish farmer who grew the grain. What the study
participants did not know was that all three pieces came from the same loaf of bread. What the graph shows is that adding the story was associated with better liking of the bread (p = .003), but the labels like organic or wholegrain did not do the trick alone. However, although the same results were prevalent in rating the piece of bread as being darker (p
RSH0010.1177/1757913915586645Current topics & opinionsCurrent topics & opinions
Current topics & opinions
How storytelling can bias sensory perceptions among young students Healthy foods are often stigmatised by a reputation of being tasteless and boring. Getting people to eat healthily is a global challenge that will have a great impact in generations to come. Laurits Rohden Skov from the research cluster on Public Health Nutrition at Aalborg University, Denmark, and Armando Pérez-Cueto, Associate Professor at the Department of Food Science at University of Copenhagen, discuss the influence of storytelling on the likeability and perceived quality of foods among university students as a proxy for promoting healthy dietary habits. today with the expanding influence of The healthy dietary habits of young people in developed countries have been social media, the stories are more efficient and spread with snowball speed. on a downward slope ever since the Earlier this year, Forbes presented a list home-cooked meal was replaced with of ‘5 secrets to use storytelling for brand eating out. Today, young people are marketing success’.5 The first, second increasingly experiencing food-related disease at a younger age than society and third items on this list are secrets has been used to, with rates of obesity, that are directly transferable to a context type 2 diabetes and elevated blood where the aim is to promote healthy food pressure reaching new heights every choices. For all health messages, it is year. The promising news is that these important to speak truthfully and diseases are preventable transparently, as most through sustained healthy healthy eating campaigns For all health dietary behaviour – have done thus far, and messages, it is infuse personalities into behaviour that furthermore important to can be taken into stories, which health speak truthfully professionals might not be adulthood and can create and healthy habits for life. used to. For effective transparently At the research cluster storytelling it is important on Public Health Nutrition that it is not the health at Aalborg University, professional talking, but a interest has been directed into the human who simplifies a somewhat determinants of food choice at point of complicated and important message. purchase. It is widely acknowledged that Infusing a personality into a health the reasons for food choices are complex message can be challenging for health and multiple, but experts suggest that professionals, but it may be very the effect of emotions,1,2 reflective and effective. Role models have been automatic cognitive processing systems3 traditionally used in brand marketing as well as in health promotion campaigns, and habits4 are strong determinants for hence a health professional or food why we eat as we do. This knowledge service provider could consider creating has been utilised by the food, drink and characters in their stories that their retail industry for many years, but why intended audience will root for. We all have we, public health professionals, neglected using some of the same tools? can recall the effect that Popeye had on Social marketers have used storytelling the intake of spinach. This principle inspired a study at The Food and Brand for brand marketing for a long time, but
174 Perspectives in Public Health l July 2015 Vol 135 No 4
Lab at Cornell University in 2012, where they created an identity associated with vegetables that the target group could relate to. They renamed carrots as ‘X-Ray Vision Carrots’ and broccoli as ‘Power Punch Broccoli’ in a self-serve school canteen.6 Children want to have x-ray vision and be as super strong as the cartoon characters and superheroes that they identify with and root for on TV and the Internet. The study showed an increase in intake of certain vegetables by up to 99% and later a prolonged effect of around 16% when compared to a control group. Although there was no cost effectiveness study carried out, this study has hardly cost anything for the school, the parents or the municipality. Stories aimed at adults are a bit different. Even though some of us might dream of super powers, we rather endeavour to achieve a certain identity or lifestyle that we would like to be associated with, or to a greater extent, want others to associate us with. This can be referred to as the social desirability bias. A study involving 140 cafeteria customers showed that descriptive names for served foods, such as ‘Traditional Cajun Red Beans with Rice’ instead of ‘Red Beans with Rice’ and ‘Succulent Italian Seafood Filet’ instead of ‘Seafood Filet’ enhanced the perception of the food as well as how it tasted.7 Similarly, research has shown that pork is rated higher in taste, tenderness, juiciness and overall acceptability if it is labelled free range or organic.8 The aim of the research presented here was to investigate how a designed story might affect the sensory perception of a simple staple food in the Danish diet – bread. Therefore, 59 students of nonfood studies were invited into a Foodscape lab for a sensory test.
Copyright © Royal Society for Public Health 2015 SAGE Publications Downloaded from rsh.sagepub.com at UNIV ARIZONA LIBRARY on September 2015 ISSN6, 1757-9139 DOI: 10.1177/1757913915586645
Current topic & opinion Figure 1 The self-reported liking, colour and crispness of bread, bread with a label and bread with a story
The Foodscape lab is a brand new facility for the study of behavioural aspects of food choices and is equipped with sophisticated instruments and software to monitor study participants and collect data. This is a versatile facility that can also be used for sensory testing. During the experiment, participants were first served a piece of bread and asked to rate it on a 9-point Likert scale according to various sensory variables. Then, they were served another piece of bread labelled either organic or wholegrain. Finally, they received a piece of bread with an added story about: the sort of grain, the farm it came from and the Danish farmer who grew the grain. What the study
participants did not know was that all three pieces came from the same loaf of bread. What the graph shows is that adding the story was associated with better liking of the bread (p = .003), but the labels like organic or wholegrain did not do the trick alone. However, although the same results were prevalent in rating the piece of bread as being darker (p
