A Change for the Better? Digital Health Technologies and Changing Food Consumption Behaviors

Abstract

Much of the existing literature in the area of food and consumer behavior concerns consumer evaluation of individual products. However, obesity and other food‐related health conditions typically occur as a result of poor diets and lifestyle, rather than poor individual product choices. As consumers, we generally have an imperfect understanding of our diet and lifestyle and use heuristics to process complex diet and lifestyle information. Increasingly, as ubiquitous computing applications in the area of food and consumption proliferate a number of questions arise about how consumers are using these technologies to assist them in processing their diet and lifestyle information. This article addresses this juncture by integrating streams of research in food consumption, information processing, and technology adoption to better understand consumer interaction with Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) to assist in information processing. As this represents a relatively new stream of research in an area of growing importance, the article develops a conceptual framework about consumer interaction with DHTs and identifies a number of pertinent questions for future research to examine.

An Exploration and Investigation of Edible Insect Consumption: The Impacts of Image and Description on Risk Perceptions and Purchase Intent

“…Drawing from information processing theories, consumers process imagery and descriptive information differently when encountering unfamiliar and perceived unappealing or disgusting food sources. There is a call for research to examine the psychology of food consumption (Spiteri, Cornish, & Morales, ) especially in terms of the relationship between information processing and consumer choice (Lowe, Fraser, & Souza‐Monteiro, ). This research argues that the information regarding insects contained in various food products would potentially influence consumers’ risk perceptions.…”

Pride in Technology‐Based Health Interventions: A Double‐Edged Sword

“…As the interaction between humans and technology continues to rise, social marketing technology-based interventions should be examined as methods for countering obesity (Lowe, Fraser, & Souza-Monteiro, 2015). Many studies have been conducted on the efficacy of technology-based weight control interventions (e.g., Burke, Wang, & Sevick, 2011;Unick, Kent, & Wing, 2015) and positive emotions were found to be integral to weight loss and maintenance (Elfhag & Rössner, 2005).…”

Changing Food Consumption Behaviors

“…These studies point to the need to enhance mindfulness and make an individual's goals more salient within their day‐to‐day lives. This could be accomplished by using digital health technologies to monitor behaviors and accomplishment of goals (Lowe, Fraser, & Souza‐Monteiro, ; Thomas & Bond, ).…”

“…These studies point to the need to enhance mindfulness and make an individual's goals more salient within their day-to-day lives. This could be accomplished by using digital health technologies to monitor behaviors and accomplishment of goals (Lowe, Fraser, & Souza-Monteiro, 2015;Thomas & Bond, 2014). Areni and Black (2015) show that receiving smaller portion sizes relative to expectations leads individuals to take longer to eat, pay more attention to, and savor the food consumption experience.…”