The valiant efforts of governments and health groups to inform and educate the community about healthy food choices (‘‘Most don’t understand kilojoules’’, May 6, p.6) will never succeed, for three fundamental reasons: first, because these efforts are overwhelmed by the greater marketing resources and sophisticated approaches of the food and beverage industry (including the fast food sector), who effectively manipulate the environment in which food choices are made; second, because when people make decisions about food choices – and we are said to make more than 200 food decisions every day – many of these are ‘‘mindless’’, subconscious or habit-based decisions; and, third – as the recent consumer research has shown – conscious decisions about food will prioritise many other factors before ‘‘health’’, even where information is provided.
For these reasons, ‘‘information’’ and ‘‘education’’ will only achieve so much and are unlikely to persuade those who resist health messages and whose priorities and interests are elsewhere.
Rather than trying to influence millions of individuals to make conscious decisions which prioritise health – which is often an abstract and long-term concept – governments should be addressing the ‘‘obesogenic environment’’, encouraging or mandating food reformulation, restricting unhealthy food advertising to children, and focusing on other strategies which would make the healthy choices the easy choices by default.