Turnwald Bradley P, Jurafsky Dan, Conner Alana, Crum Alia J
Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
Department of Linguistics and Department of Computer Science, Stanford University.
Health Psychol. 2017 Nov;36(11):1034-1037. doi: 10.1037/hea0000501. Epub 2017 May 25.
As obesity rates continue to climb in America, much of the blame has fallen on the high-calorie meals at popular chain restaurants. Many restaurants have responded by offering "healthy" menu options. Yet menus' descriptions of healthy options may be less attractive than their descriptions of less healthy, standard options. This study examined the hypothesis that the words describing items in healthy menu sections are less appealing than the words describing items in standard menu sections.
Menus from the top-selling American casual-dining chain restaurants with dedicated healthy submenus (N = 26) were examined, and the library of words from health-labeled items (N = 5,873) was compared to that from standard menu items (N = 38,343) across 22 qualitative themes (e.g., taste, texture).
Log-likelihood ratios revealed that restaurants described healthy items with significantly less appealing themes and significantly more health-related themes. Specifically, healthy items were described as less exciting, fun, traditional, American regional, textured, provocative, spicy hot, artisanal, tasty, and indulgent than standard menu items, but were described with significantly more foreign, fresh, simple, macronutrient, deprivation, thinness, and nutritious words.
Describing the most nutritious menu options in less appealing terms may perpetuate beliefs that healthy foods are not flavorful or indulgent, and may undermine customers' choice of healthier dining options. From a public health perspective, incorporating more appealing descriptive language to boost the appeal of nutritious foods may be one avenue to improve dietary health. (PsycINFO Database Record
随着美国肥胖率持续攀升，很多人将责任归咎于受欢迎的连锁餐厅提供的高热量餐食。许多餐厅对此做出回应，推出了“健康”菜单选项。然而，菜单对健康选项的描述可能不如对不太健康的标准选项的描述有吸引力。本研究检验了这样一个假设，即描述健康菜单部分菜品的用词不如描述标准菜单部分菜品的用词有吸引力。
研究了美国最畅销的设有专门健康子菜单的休闲餐饮连锁餐厅的菜单（N = 26），并将带有健康标签菜品（N = 5873）的词汇库与标准菜单菜品（N = 38343）的词汇库在22个定性主题（如口味、质地）方面进行了比较。
对数似然比显示，餐厅对健康菜品的描述使用的吸引力主题显著更少，而与健康相关的主题显著更多。具体而言，与标准菜单菜品相比，健康菜品被描述为不那么令人兴奋、有趣、传统、具有美国地方特色、有质感、刺激、辣、手工制作、美味和让人放纵，但使用的与外国、新鲜、简单、宏量营养素、匮乏、瘦身和营养相关的词汇显著更多。
用缺乏吸引力的措辞来描述最营养的菜单选项可能会使人们一直认为健康食品没有味道或不能让人放纵，并且可能会削弱顾客选择更健康餐饮选项的意愿。从公共卫生的角度来看，使用更有吸引力的描述性语言来提高营养食品的吸引力可能是改善饮食健康的一条途径。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》
