Marketing Nutrition

by Wansink, Brian

• ISBN13: 9780252029424
• ISBN10: 0252029429
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-30
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Hardly a week goes by without a report of how some common food helps the human body fend off a disease or succumb to one. Although encouraging people to eat more nutritiously can encourage better health, most efforts by companies, health professionals, and even parents are disappointingly ineffective. Misunderstanding consumers has lead to floundering sales for soy foods; embarrassing results for expensive Five-a-Day for Better Health programs, and uneaten mountains of vegetables at homes and in school cafeterias.The fact that nutrition is currently only centrally important to a small segment of the population points to a significant problem, particularly given the connection between diet and serious issues such as obesity, diabetes, strokes, and heart disease. Brian Wansink's Marketing Nutrition focuses on why people eat the foods they do, and what can be effectively and efficiently done to improve nutrition.The book's conclusions represent the combined findings of over thirty researchers and a series of twenty studies involving more than five thousand people on five continents. Wansink argues that the problem with nutrition is that it comes with a cost, often losing to competing considerations like price, convenience, habits, and taste. Wansink specifically shows how food fads, food perceptions and the psychology of various marketing segments can be leveraged to increase the consumption of functional foods. Additional chapters investigate de-marketing obesity, consumer reactions to food crises, and specific tools that can be used to understand consumer psychology to food.Wansink argues that the true challenge in marketing nutrition lies in leveraging new tools of consumer psychology (which he specifically demonstrates) and by applying lessons from the failures and successes of others. The same tools and insights that have helped make less nutritious products popular also offer the best opportunity to bring people back to a nutritious lifestyle. The key problem with marketing nutrition remains, after all, marketing.

Author Biography

Brian Wansink is professor of applied economics of marketing and of nutritional science at Cornell University. He is the director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Credits	xi
Introduction	1	(12)
PART 1: SECRETS ABOUT FOOD AND PEOPLE
1. Nutrition Knowledge That Matters	13	(8)
2. Classified World War II Food Secrets	21	(12)
3. If It Sounds Good, It Tastes Good	33	(14)
PART 2: TOOLS FOR TARGETING
4. Profiling the Perfect Consumer	47	(14)
5. Mental Maps That Lead to Consumer Insights	61	(12)
6. Targeting Nutritional Gatekeepers	73	(12)
PART 3: THE HEALTH OF NATIONS
7. The De-marketing of Obesity	85	(15)
8. Why Five-a-Day Programs Often Fail	100	(8)
9. Winning the Biotechnology Battle	108	(13)
10. Managing Consumer Reactions to Food Crises	121	(18)
PART 4: LABELING THAT ACTUALLY WORKS
11. Leveraging Food and Drug Administration Health Claims	139	(11)
12. Health Claims: When Less Equals More	150	(11)
PART 5: MARKETING NUTRITION
13. Introducing Unfamiliar Foods to Unfamiliar Lands	161	(11)
14. Global Best Practices	172	(13)
Conclusion: Looking Backward and Speeding Forward	185	(12)
References and Suggested Readings	197	(8)
Index	205