Whereas everyone recognizes that increasing obesity rates worldwide are driven by a complex set of interrelated factors, the marketing actions of the food industry are often singled out as one of the main culprits. But how exactly is food marketing making us fat? To answer this question, we...

Food marketing is often singled out as the leading cause of the obesity epidemic. In this review, we examine the current food marketing, determine how exactly it may be influencing food intake, and how food marketers could meet their business objectives while helping people eat healthier. We pay...

Five studies show that people, including experts such as professional chefs, estimate quantity decreases more accurately than quantity increases. We argue that this asymmetry occurs because physical quantities cannot be negative. Consequently, there is a natural lower bound (zero) when...

Food products claim to be healthy in many ways, but prior research has either investigated these claims at the macro level (using broad descriptions such as “healthy” or “tasty”) or at the micro level (using single claims like “low fat”). Our meso-level framework examines 1) whether...

Because packaging reaches consumers at the critical moments of purchase and consumption, it has become an important marketing tool for food manufacturers and retailers. In this paper, I first review how the marketing, health and nutrition claims made on packaging create “health halos” and...

We first choose what to eat and then we choose how much to eat. Yet as consumer psychologists, we understand food choice much better than food consumption quantity. This review focuses on three powerful drivers of food consumption quantity: 1) Sensory cues (how your senses react), 2) emotional...

In their commentary of our “Slim by Design” article, Herman and Polivy offer a simple and powerful model of food intake which focuses on the mediating role of hunger, taste, and appropriateness. In their commentary, Roberto, Pomeranz, and Fisher review both new and classic interventions...

Government should be able to require consumer product makers and sellers to post government public health messages on or near the relevant product packages as a regulatory condition imposed on enterprises, compliance with which would be required in order to be permitted to sell those products....

The government has successfully prosecuted pharmaceutical companies for off-label promotion of drugs, maintaining that such promotion impermissibly undermines the FDA’s pre-market approval process and jeopardizes the public health. In several recent cases, however, pharmaceutical companies...

This report is the ninth in an annual series of publications, dating back to 2012, showcasing the latest developments in social media across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This year’s study is produced in partnership with the New Media Academy. The New Media Academy was...