Suggesting healthier choices to online shoppers may help them cut calories

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-02-18 06:00

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Suggesting healthier food 'swaps' to shoppers on supermarket websites when purchasing particularly unhealthy products could help customers cut the calories, according to UK researchers. They tested the system on 713 online shoppers, and found they accepted around one in eight of the suggested healthier swaps. Overall, they found offering swaps reduced both energy (kcal) per product and energy (kcal) per shopping basket. They also tested three different ways of encouraging swaps - emphasising health benefits, emphasising lower cost, or telling shoppers other people preferred the healthier product. There was no difference between the three in terms of how likely shoppers were to accept the swap.

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Journal/
conference: PLOS ONE

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Public Health England Behavioural Insights, UK

Funder: This work was completed as part of the usual business activities of Public Health England and received no additional funding. LP, JGS and MGI were on placement at Public Health England as part of the RCUK internship scheme for part of their involvement in this work.

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