{"id":7622,"date":"2022-01-01T16:57:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-01T08:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/?p=7622"},"modified":"2022-01-01T16:57:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-01T08:57:42","slug":"online-menus-should-put-healthy-food-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/online-menus-should-put-healthy-food-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Online menus should put healthy food first"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Women who see healthy food at the top of an online menu are 30 to 40 percent more likely to order it, a Flinders University study has found, with the authors saying menu placement could play a role in encouraging healthier eating.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in the journal Appetite<\/em><\/a> and led by Flinders University PhD Candidate Indah Gynell, the team investigated where on a menu healthy items should be placed to best encourage people to choose them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrevious research has explored menu placement before, but the studies were inconsistent, with some finding placing food items at the top and bottom of a menu increased their popularity, while others suggested that the middle is best,\u201d said Ms Gynell from Flinders\u2019 College of Education, Psychology and Social Work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn our study we compared three locations on both printed and online menus, with online being an important addition in the age of food ordering platforms, such as UberEats and Menulog, especially during the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers created menus containing eight unhealthy items and four healthy items, arranged in three rows of four on the physical printed menu and in one column of 12 on the digital menu. In one study, the physical menu was tested on 172 female participants, while in the second study, the digital menu was tested on 182 female participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female participants were chosen as previous research has found that dieting behaviours \u2013 likely to impact menu choice \u2013 are consistently more prevalent in women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants then chose an item from one of the experimental menus before completing a psychological test that identified their \u2018dietary restraint status\u2019; that is whether or not they were actively choosing to restrict their eating habits for the purpose of health or weight loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe found that neither the order of food items, nor participants’ dietary restraint status, impacted whether or not healthy food was chosen in the physical menus,\u201d says Ms Gynell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, for the online menus, we found that participants who saw healthy items at the top of an online menu were 30-40% more likely to choose a healthy item than those who viewed them further down the menu.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors say the finding is important because if added up over time, consistent healthy choices could result in general health benefits at a population level, highlighting why such an intervention could be worth implementing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDiet-related illnesses and disease are more common now than ever before, and with a rise in online food ordering it\u2019s important we uncover cost-effective and simple public health initiatives,\u201d says Ms Gynell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChanging the order of a menu, which doesn\u2019t require the addition or removal of items, is unlikely to impact profits as consumers are guided towards healthier options without being discouraged from purchasing altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis means it\u2019s more likely to be accepted by food purveyors and, despite being a somewhat simple solution, has the potential to shape real-world healthy eating interventions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The effect of item placement on snack food choices from physical and online menus<\/a><\/em> by Indah Gynell, Eva Kemps, Ivanka Prichard and Marika Tiggemann is published in the journal Appetite<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women who see healthy food at the top of an online menu are 30 to 40 percent more likely to order it, a Flinders University study has found, with the authors saying menu placement could play a role in encouraging healthier eating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7623,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2048,2218,650],"class_list":["post-7622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsmakers","category-spotlight","tag-good-life","tag-high-life","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7625,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7622\/revisions\/7625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}