Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity (The Food Series) [Hardcover]

Brian Wansink (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Food Series | Publication Date: June 8, 2005

Although encouraging people to eat more nutritiously can promote better health, most efforts by companies, health professionals, and even parents are disappointingly ineffective. Consumer confusion 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. Brian Wansink's Marketing Nutrition focuses on why people eat the foods they do, and what can be done to improve their nutrition.

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 other products' failures and successes. The same tools and insights that have helped make less nutritious products popular also offer the best opportunity to reintroduce a nutritious lifestyle. The key problem with marketing nutrition remains, after all, marketing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Read this book! You will not be able to put it down. You will find yourself nodding in agreement and having countless 'ah-ha' moments when you realize how much you wish this book had been available and required reading for your first nutrition counseling class. . . . This book is a must for everyone wanting to help people be healthier. It should be required reading for all dietetics students and practicing nutrition specialists."--Today's Dietitian

"Highly recommended."--Choice

"While this book does not target chefs, per se, any chef interested in nutrition and how consumers build their eating patterns and determine their food choices will be educated by the anecdotes and informational studies."--National Culinary Review

From the Author

Marketing Nutrition – Making it Easy to Eat Healthy Although encouraging people to eat more nutritiously promotes better health, many companies, health professionals, and even we as parents are less effective than we could be. Misunderstanding consumers has lead to floundering sales for soy foods, modest results for costly nutrition programs, and mountains of uneaten vegetables in homes and in school cafeterias. The objective of Marketing Nutrition (University of Illinois Press, 2005) is to change this.

This is not simply a Marketing 101 rehash applied to nutritious foods. It is based on dozens of studies conducted by the interdisciplinary research team at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab. The book identifies 14 real problems – such as "Nutrition Turn-off," the 5-a-Day frustration, De-marketing obesity, and targeting nutritional gatekeepers – and answers these problems through specific studies. The findings are broken down into what their implications are for brand managers, dieticians, health care professionals, and public policy officials. Some of these findings show . . . -- To change eating habits, target the cooks, not the consumers -- What are the best ways to introduce new foods into a diet -- How a "Clueless Cook" can make foods taste better in less than a minute -- Who are the three types of cooks who lead trends and opinions -- What type of health information is most effective -- How what nutrition label information is most effective

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (June 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252029429
• ISBN-13: 978-0252029424
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,653,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a professor whose mission is to help transform people's lives by finding the small changes that make the big difference. Most of my work is around food psychology and changing behavior -- what and how much someone eats.

For the past year, I've had an incredible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was offered a Presidential appointment to be the Executive Director for USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) -- it's the group in charge of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines and the Food Guide Pyramid (MyPyramid). We're doing lots of great things, but I'll return to Cornell as a Professor on January 21st 2009, when the new administration starts. In the meantime, check out MyPyramid.gov.




Okay, now here's the official boring bio:

Brian Wansink (Ph.D. Stanford 1990) is author of the best-selling book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (Bantam 2006) and of Marketing Nutrition (UIllinois Press 2005).

He is the John Dyson Professor of Consumer Behavior at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. Previously, has been a professor of Nutritional science and of Marketing at Dartmouth College, the Vrije Universiteit (The Netherlands), the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, INSEAD (France), and he was a visiting scientist at the U.S. Army Research Labs in Natick, MA.

His award-winning academic research on food psychology and behavior change has been published in the world's top marketing, medical, and nutrition journals. It has been presented, translated, reported, and featured in television documentaries on every continent but Antarctica.

The research findings of he and his colleagues have also contributed to the introduction of smaller '100 calorie' packages (to prevent overeating), the use of taller glasses in some bars (to prevent the overpouring of alcohol), and the use of elaborate names and mouth-watering descriptions on some chain restaurant menus (to improve enjoyment of the food).

An Iowa native, he lives with his family in Ithaca, NY, where he regularly enjoys both French food and french fries.


BRIAN WANSINK
John Dyson Chair of Marketing and of Applied Economics
Director - Cornell Food and Brand Lab
110 Warren Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7801

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marketing Nutrition - Making it Easy to Eat Better, August 9, 2005

By 

Brian Wansink "Brian Wansink (PhD)" (Ithaca, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity (The Food Series) (Hardcover)

Although encouraging people to eat more nutritiously promotes better health, many companies, dieticians, and even parents are disappointingly ineffective at it. Misunderstanding consumers has lead to floundering sales for soy foods, modest results for costly nutrition programs, and mountains of uneaten vegetables in homes and in school cafeterias. The objective of "Marketing Nutrition" (University of Illinois Press, 2005) is to change this.

The full title of the book is "Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity," and this is not simply a Marketing 101 rehash applied to nutritious foods. It is based on dozens of studies conducted by the interdisciplinary research team at Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab.

The book identifies 14 real problems - such as de-Marketing obesity, winning the biotechnology battle, leveraging FDA claims, targeting nutritional gatekeepers - and answers these problems through specific studies. The findings are broken down into what their implications are for brand managers, dieticians, health care professionals, and public policy officials. Some of these findings show . . .

-- To change eating habits, target the cooks, not the consumers
-- To introduce new foods into diets, encourage small, infrequent substitutions
-- The better the description of a food, the better people perceive its taste
-- There are three types of cooks who lead trends and opinions
-- Health claims are most effective if quantitative and personal
-- Use both sides of a package - short claims on front; long on back

In two other chapters, instead of directly answering problems, two new techniques are illustrated that can be used to better understand a person's view toward healthy foods and how to improve it. Since the answer to this is food specific and segment specific, instructions are given about how to 1) Develop mental maps of how people view a specific food, and 2) prototype ideal "food champions" and "clone" them in others who are predisposed in the same direction.

The author of Marketing Nutrition is Brian Wansink (Ph.D.), who is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Nutritional Science at Cornell University. He directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, a group of interdisciplinary researchers who have conducted over 200 studies on why we eat what we eat and buy what we buy.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marketing Nutrition for Health Professionals, May 10, 2010

By 

Tara M. Diversi (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity (The Food Series) (Hardcover)

I have been a follower of Professor Brian Wansink's brilliant work since studying as a dietitian from 2002, and Brian's book - Marketing Nutrition has been like my bible for my nutrition consulting.

We continue to face problems with the health of society deteriorating, and in Marketing Nutrition the science of nutrition is combined with the practical applicability of marketing and consumer behaviour to promote positive health behaviour.

As Dietitians, we have a strong understanding of the science behind how food and nutrients affect the body and body composition. We are passionate about having our message heard, but unfortunately as depicted on page 14 of Marketing Nutrition; Doctors, Magazines, Books and Television were ranked as more highly trusted sources of nutrition information than nutritionists.

Marketing nutrition gives us the tools to marketing nutrition and health and how we can use the principle that marketers use to achieve effective health outcomes.

Sometimes as dietitians, we believe that knowledge is power and focus on educating our clients. Although important, Brian identifies a hierarchy in nutrition knowledge and that if people link knowledge of a food's attributes to personal health consequences, they are more likely to accept and consume a new food.

Gatekeepers are identified as the key to promoting healthy eating, making up to 70% of the families food choices. To be successful, we therefore need to target gatekeepers who are making health decisions on behalf of others. Brian also describes research into successful health claims. Interestingly, short health claims were found to be more believable than long ones, and this could be relevant for all types of health messages.

The great thing about Marketing Nutrition is that it can't be adequately described in a summary - each chapter introduces new ideas, strategies and case studies around nutrition marketing. It can be used as a textbook - and should be within every dietetic course, where students would benefit from learning strategies about getting nutrition messages across.

Relevance to Health Professionals

Marketing Nutrition is obviously specifically written for dietitians, mums, teachers, restaurateurs and the food industry that have goals to improve the appeal of nutrition for their primary target audiences.

However, some of the principles in Marketing Nutrition can be transferred to other areas of the health industry. Marketing Nutrition encourages us to

* Apply the four P's of marketing to health message marketing to promote change.
* Understand your client's, separate them into client profiles and ensure messages are tailored to suit their needs.
* Use interesting, creative and descriptive adjectives to improve the acceptance of healthy food and other healthy non-food products.
* Look at research from other fields such as marketing, behavioural economics, psychology, advertising and consumer behaviour to determine whether any strategies tested in these fields can help you market your health messages.
* Use short key messages to market your health message.
* Increase availability of healthy alternatives.
* Connect to the emotion of your clients, but asking `why' questions when discussing likes and dislikes associated with health.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful tool, September 25, 2005

By 

Carol M. Koprowski - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity (The Food Series) (Hardcover)

This book highlights the importance of considering what influences food choices. Too often health care providers ask individuals to make changes without taking into account the subtle environmental cues that encourage us to overeat or make inappropriate food choices. The author discusses the importance of being aware of these cues so that mindful eating practices can be developed.