Increasing public support for food-industry related, obesity prevention policies: The role of a taste-engineering frame and contextualized values

Abstract

a b s t r a c tBackground: Support for policies to combat obesity is often undermined by a public sense that obesity is largely a matter of personal responsibility. Industry rhetoric is a major contributor to this perception, as the soda/fast food/big food companies emphasize choice and individual agency in their efforts to neutralize policies that are burdensome. Yet obesity experts recognize that environmental forces play a major role in obesity. We investigate whether exposure to a taste-engineering frame increases support for food and beverage policies that address obesity. A taste-engineering frame details strategies used by the food industry to engineer preferences and increase the over-consumption of processed foods and sugary beverages. We also examine the effects of exposure to two contextualized values that have recently been promoted in expert discourseeconsumer knowledge and consumer safety e on public support of policies. Our research shows how causal frames and contextualized values may effectively produce support for new obesity policies. Methods: We use an online survey experiment to test the effects of exposure to a taste-engineering frame (TEF), the value of consumer knowledge (CK), or the value of consumer safety (CS), on level of support for a range of policies. A random sample of adults, age 18 þ living in the United States was included in the study (N ¼ 2580). Ordered logistic regression was used to measure the effects of treatment exposure. The primary outcome was level-of-support for four (4) food-industry related, obesity prevention policies (aka food and beverage policies): 1) require food-manufacturers to disclose the amount of additives in food products on food packaging; 2) require food-manufacturers to advertise food products in accordance with their actual nutritional value; 3) prohibit all high-fat, high-sugar food advertising on television programming watched primarily by children; and 4) increase healthy food availability in work sites, schools, and hospitals. Findings: These data suggest that a taste-engineering frame and contextualized values significantly increase public support for many of the food and beverage policies tested. Conclusions: Applying a taste-engineering frame and/or contextualized values to address obesity advances a population-based policy agenda to counteract the effects of food-industry strategies.

30+ years of media analysis of relevance to chronic disease: a scoping review

“…[136,[156][157][158][159][160][161][162]), or on knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about the causes, consequences and solutions to a range of health issues (n=25, e.g. [49,88,120,147,159,160,[163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173][174]). Such studies often employed experimental designs to test the impact of differences in framing (e.g.…”

“…incorporating information on context, risk factors, prevention strategies, and social attributions of responsibility), increases support for policy change across a range of health issues, including obesity, smoking and diabetes [168], while another found that a taste-engineering frame (i.e. highlighting strategies used by the food industry to increase consumption), increases support for food and beverage policies [172]. In contrast, individualising the problem of obesity by identifying an individual child within a news story was associated with reduced support for obesity policies, regardless of how causes of obesity were framed [120].…”

Narrative Medicine Meets Planetary Health: Mindsets Matter in the Anthropocene

“…Humans (and their funding 'appendages') decide upon the "obstacles" worthy of overcoming. Patients, communities, and policy makers should be fully aware that while one scientist is working on the obstacles of infectious disease (e.g., vaccine development), another is using scientific reasoning to overcome the "obstacle" of how to make already-ultra-processed foods even more palatable [63,64].…”

Astrofood, Priorities and Pandemics: Reflections of an Ultra-Processed Breakfast Program and Contemporary Dysbiotic Drift

“…This physiological form of engineering is accompanied by cognitive engineering in the form of effective marketing mentioned above-advertisements, celebrity endorsements, toy giveaways, "health-halo" label claims, and vague terminology such as "nutritious" which collectively appeal to the mind of the parent and/or child consumer. The third form of engineering is the manipulation of the total food environment via product placement and prominent shelf-space devoted to ultra-processed, energy-dense, low-nutrient foods [147].…”