Influence of impending healthy food consumption on snacking: Nudging vs. compensatory behaviour

The use of nudging, prompts or primes in the environment aligned with desired goals, as a strategy to promote healthy behaviour has gained increasing attention. Yet, the adoption of healthy behaviours may ironically be frustrated by licensing of competing goals for indulgence, producing compensatory unhealthy behaviours. However, little is known of these unintended compensatory effects of "health" nudging, and the conditions in which engagement of healthy behaviours may continue to activate health goals versus compensatory goals for indulgence. Over two studies, we examined both behavioural phenomena by investigating the influence of impending healthy food consumption on snack intake. We predicted that anticipated engagement of healthy eating will prime healthier eating behaviour (decreased snack intake), unless consumption of an anticipated healthy meal is expected to lead to an energy deficit (a "low calorie" meal), which may instead activate compensatory indulgence (increased snack intake). Study 1 demonstrated that the increase in the saliency of "healthiness" (unrelated to calorie content) from an anticipated meal resulted in lower snack intake (potato crisp consumption). Study 2 revealed that the anticipated consumption of a healthy meal described as low in caloric content promoted compensatory eating behaviour. This maladaptive behaviour was also observed to be associated with the endorsement of weight-regulation-related compensatory health beliefs. Furthermore, the findings also suggest that more restrained eaters (who experience competing goals for health and indulgence) may be especially likely to engage in healthier eating behaviour when anticipating healthy meals that were not portrayed to be low in calories. Taken together, our findings suggest that nudging by increasing the salience of healthy options without implying resulting negative energy balance is an effective strategy in promoting healthy eating behaviour and may be less prone to maladaptive compensatory behaviour, especially for individuals actively regulating their dietary behaviour.