Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Health
You might not know how many calories were in that sandwich. But if you got lunch at the Massachusetts General Hospital cafeteria, you could tell with one glance whether you'd made a healthful choice: offerings are color-coded.
Simply posting calories does not always get consumers to make healthier choices. So researchers tried something different.
Mass General’s cafeteria food and beverage options were classified as least, somewhat or most healthful with red, yellow or green labels. Green is healthiest. Researchers then tracked some 4,600 employees.
About six months after the changes were made, the purchases of "red" label food decreased by more than 15 percent, and "red" beverages dropped by 39 percent. "Green" food and drink purchases increased, according to the study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. [Douglas Levy et al., Food Choices of Minority and Low-Income Employees]
Making healthy food choices easier could especially help the poor the undereducated, the very populations most affected by the obesity epidemic. Mass General employees from those groups made the biggest improvements.
—Katherine Harmon
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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8 Comments
Add CommentThank you for linking to the journal article!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few key quotes:
"Importantly, switching to lower calorie beverages did not change the average amount of money that employees spent on beverages."
"Although it was not possible to determine the exact mechanism of the labeling scheme’s effectiveness, two key features of the labels may have contributed.
First, a traffic-light system is simple and does not have the numeracy demands of calorie counts.
Second, it gives consumers information about what not to eat. Self-control is an inhibitory process, and may best be triggered by specific information on what actions to avoid."
"employees from all racial/ethnic and job-type groups had similar improvements in purchasing after color-coded labeling followed by a choice architecture intervention were implemented, indicating that these interventions work equally well in populations at particular risk."
Why? Because Americans are too stupid to read labels or understand the decades of literature and media coverage and doctor discussions and...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would not say that Americans are "too stupid" to read labels. I read labels all of the time. Media companies have gotten very good at obfuscating the contents in the way they are listed. Given a simple color-coding system that says "if these contents are in the food, it gets a red label," the leeway is taken away from the spin-doctors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides, if you are given the option between food with a red label, a yellow label, and a green label (assuming all of the food is the same price) I will wager that anyone would choose the food with the green label.
I have developed a weightloss program in Australia that is based on simple natural colour coding; it needs no calorie counting, just colour combining, according to biology based, evolutionary anthropology. And it works.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee Google under 'Colour Eating', and 'The Colorific Manifesto of Women's Waist & Disease Control' on:
www.youthevity.com
This is unfair to colour blind people, you are condemning me to an early demise. lol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo Fanandala: No, you're not doomed for an early demise!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust remember the following 7 medically proven, cheap & easily available superfoods and factor them into your daily eating scheme, preferably raw and crunchy:
an apple, an orange, a corn cob, a carrot, a bell pepper, and a stick of celery! The medicine is inbuilt into their natural colour pigments.
( sounds simple, and works. This health info is based on recommendations by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.www.healthyactive.gov.au)
A very successful version of these labels are available for at-home use. Easy Diet Labels. Online at www.easydietlabels.net and information at customerservice@easydietlabels.com. (Also at OrcasProductsGroup.com)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey were written up in First Magazine about 2 years ago, and were endorsed by HungryGirl. I have used them and have lost sixty pounds. More importantly, for the first time in my life I am eating vegetables and am making healthy food choices.
When i was a kid my moms(doctor) nurse from her hospital named aunt "Baby" used to bring me double coloured cakes.She had a child and loved those cakes.She has also saved me from a chasing bull by throwing stones at it like an angel.
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