Eating Healthy or Feeling Empty? How the “Healthy = Less Filling” Intuition Influences Satiety

Abstract

To help understand the unconscious drivers of overeating, we examine the effect of health portrayals on people’s judgments of the fillingness of food. An implicit association test and two consumption studies provide evidence that people hold an implicit belief that healthy foods are less filling than unhealthy foods, an effect we label the “healthy = less filling” intuition. The consumption studies provide evidence that people order greater quantities of food, consume more of it, and are less full after consuming a food portrayed as more versus less healthy. In addition, we demonstrate a novel tactic for reversing consumers’ intuitions: highlighting the nourishing aspects of healthy food mitigates the belief that it is less filling. Taken together, these findings add to the burgeoning body of work on the psychological causes of weight gain and obesity and point to a way of overturning the pernicious effects of the “healthy = less filling” intuition.