An Urban's Rural View

If anyone still doubts the "health halo" bestowed on a food by slapping "organic" on its label, a new study by Cornell University researchers seems to clinch the matter.

The researchers recruited 115 people from a shopping mall and had them taste two different yogurts, two different cookies and two different potato chips. One of each pair was labeled "organic" and the other "regular."

You know what's coming. Even though the pairs were in fact identical, the "organic" food was rated higher. What you may not anticipate is the measures on which they were rated higher. For example, to quote the study's abstract (http://tiny.cc/…), "participants estimated those foods with organic labels to be lower in calories than those without the organic label."

Lower in calories? You're joking, right?

In addition, the foods labeled organic "yielded better nutritional evaluations" -- they were perceived as having less fat and more fiber.

Less fat and more fiber. Hmm.

And for benefits like these people were naturally willing to pay more: a whopping 23.4% more (http://tiny.cc/…).

Those least likely to credit the "organic" choice with lower calories were "people who typically read nutritional labels, who often buy organic foods, and who often engage in pro-environmental activities." This, the researchers said, "underscores the idea that the health halo effect is primarily driven by automatic processing based on heuristics."

A heuristic is a mental shortcut or rule of thumb. Heuristics, by one definition (http://tiny.cc/…), "shorten decision-making time and allow people to function without constantly stopping to think about the next course of action. While heuristics are helpful in many situations, they can also lead to biases."

Apparently the researchers had similar reservations about the healthfulness of heuristics. According to the account of the study on FoodNavigator.com, the researchers observed that if organic labels influence how people judge a food's overall healthfulness, "perhaps it is important to assess whether these labels are truly beneficial for helping customers construct a healthier diet."

In other words, give credit to organics where credit is due, but we've got a problem when shoppers' reflex is to think they're superior in every imaginable way.

(AG)

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