Getting people to eat healthily is no easy task.
Fresh produce consumption in the UK continues to fall, and despite high-profile marketing campaigns for 5 A Day, just one in five adults currently eats the recommended five portions of fruit and veg, according to a survey by the World Cancer Research Fund.
Only this week, increasingly desperate medical professionals called for a punitive 20% “fat tax” to be imposed on unhealthy foods, in the hope that if willpower and education alone cannot convince Brits to switch crisps for apples, perhaps financial penalties would.
Given our growing healthy eating crisis, I was interested to read a report in the British Food Journal this week looking at how our general taste preferences - whether we have a sweet tooth or a taste for salty stuff - are linked to how much fruit we eat.
Researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands asked 2,100 people to self-classify according to whether they preferred sweet, sour or salty foods. They were then quizzed about their fruit-eating habits as well as their general snacking behaviour.
Their study threw up some interesting - and rather counterintuitive - findings.
Although a lot of fruit is partly “sweet”, consumers with a self-declared sweet tooth do not eat more fruit than people who prefer salty or sour foods. Instead, they are drawn to chocolate bars, which they eat in significantly greater quantities than other consumer groups.
It’s those with a taste for sour foods that score highest on fruit consumption. They eat significantly more apples than other people, for example. This suggests that although fruit typically has sweet as well as sour notes, the sour taste of fruit has a greater influence on consumption.
More interestingly still, they found our palates are also linked to the importance we place on convenience. People who prefer sweet foods seem to be more convenience-oriented than those who like sour foods.
Could it be, therefore, that people with a sweet tooth don’t eat more fruit because they perceive it as being inconvenient?
More research would be needed to be certain, the study’s authors say, but they suggest people’s taste preferences and their need for convenience are taken into greater account when trying to increase the public’s fruit consumption.
A focus on offering convenience formats for fruits that are especially appealing to people with a sweet tooth could perhaps help persuade them to swap a chocolate bar for a piece of fruit every once in a while.
No comments yet