Candy at the Checkout: Obesity And Product Placement
November 9, 2012Candy at the Checkout: Obesity And Product Placement
So you are standing in line at the grocery store or even your local Walmart and your shopping cart is filled with everything that you intended to purchase. You are a little hungry and can't wait to get home to eat a healthy snack. All you need to do is load your groceries and check out right? And then it happens...your eyes are drawn to the carefully stocked shelves that surround you and you are suddenly in junk food heaven! Candy bars, chips, sodas, and every thing on the aisles that you purposely had avoided! Now that my friends, is called product placement or impulse marketing. Your local friendly retailers are placing unhealthy products in prominent locations and counting on your sweet tooth, salt cravings, hunger pangs, and impulse purchases. The very foods associated with chronic diseases, including obesity, surround the cash registers and can have a direct impact on your health and your wallet.
According to two health researchers who authored an article published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, most purchasing decisions are made very quickly and with out a lot of thought, usually in less than a second.
"Even when people are consciously trying to make healthful choices, their ability to resist palatable foods in convenient locations wanes when they are distracted, are under stress, are tired, or have just made other decisions that deplete their cognitive capacity." writes Dr. Deborah A. Cohen and Dr. Susan H. Babey. "Placement of foods in prominent locations increases the rate at which they're purchased; purchase leads to consumption; and consumption of foods high in sugar, fat, and salt increases the risks of chronic diseases.
The authors think it's time to treat candy at the cash register as a hidden risk factor due to the fact that product placement directly influences our food choices in a way that is largely involuntary and out of our conscious control. They conclude that new marketing approaches are needed and a good start would be to implement regulations that would limit the types of foods that can be displayed in end-of-aisle locations. New regulations in unhealthy food marketing strategies just may be an important step in helping to lower America's obesity epidemic as well as the risks of chronic illnesses.
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