Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity

The Food Series

by Brian Wansink

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.

Genres: Food

224 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2005

About the author

Brian Wansink is an American professor in the fields of consumer behavior and nutritional science and is currently serving as the Executive Director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP), which is charged with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines and with promoting the Food Guide Pyramid (MyPyramid).

Wansink is best known for his work on consumer behavior and food and for popularizing terms such as "mindless eating" and "health halos." His research has focused on how our immediate environment (supermarkets, packaging, homes, pantries, and tablescapes) influences eating habits and preferences. Wansink holds the John S. Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University. He is the author of over 100 academic articles and books, including the best-selling book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think and Marketing Nutrition (2005). He is a 2007 recipient of the humorous Ig Nobel Prize and was named ABC World News Person of the Week on January 4, 2008.

Reviews

[Seth Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost, I’d like to take this time to apologize to not only my Goodreads friends, fans, and family, but also to the Austin Public Library as well. I have no good excuse why it took me so long to read this book, and to the austin public library—I’m so sorry for forgetting i had this book and renewed it 5 times. This was an interesting book too so I’m SORRY! To whoever checks this book out next—I hope you take better care of him than I did. To my Goodreads fans, I’m sorry to let you down this way. I will hopefully be finishing up another book this weekend and might even go to the library tomorrow or sometime next week.

[Kat Lynch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book for nutrition professionals who are naive to sociological/anthropological study and/or marketing. But fairly obvious stuff to anyone who has experience with any of those.

I would have liked to see less about efforts to promote functional foods (soy added to everything under the sun; other agri-business products touting nutrient additives) and more about efforts to promote consumption of whole foods.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

basically a textbook, but a great manual as well for dietetic practitioners