Poor diet has now overtaken smoking as the world’s biggest killer

From caramelized zucchini bites to candied crickets, scientists have come up with a foolproof way to encourage healthy eating – don’t call it healthy.

Convincing people to eat plant-rich diets, avoid junk food and care about nutrition is seen as critical to global human health and tackling climate change, which itself threatens droughts and extreme weather that disrupt food supplies.

For poor diet has now overtaken smoking as the world’s biggest killer, according to the latest Global Burden of Disease study, causing 20 percent of deaths globally in 2017.

But behavior and environmental sciences experts said coaxing rather than coercion helped to get people to eat better – and language was key to change habits along with tax incentives, posting calories and other more subtle approaches.

You can’t just yell facts at people and say, ‘Here’s a graph, here’s a chart’, said Kate Marvel, a scientist with the U.S. space agency NASA, where researchers study climate change and nutrition.

Words matter, and plant-based food options sell better when described as tasty and indulgent, said Sophie Attwood, senior behavioral scientist with the Better Buying Lab at London’s World Resources Institute, a global research organization.

Using different names for the same foods, one study found “slow-roasted caramelized zucchini bites” sold far better than “lighter-choice zucchini”, and “twisted citrus-glazed carrots” outsold “carrots with sugar-free citrus dressing.”

We can start to use the lessons from big brands and actually sell the alternatives in the same way, Attwood said.

She pointed to the successful marketing of a low-calorie soda in Europe and Asia as Pepsi Max rather than Diet Pepsi.

You want to ‘Pepsi-Max’ plant-based food, she said.

Source: Reuters