Authors
I G Diniz, A Hässig-Wegmann, M Siegrist
Published in
Appetite. Pages 108810. Oct 27, 2026. Epub Oct 27, 2026.
Abstract
Food processing technologies play a crucial role in nutrition security and the development of more sustainable food systems. However, consumers often view food processing negatively, associating it with unnaturalness. In this study, we examined the extent to which perceptions of processing and (un)naturalness differ across products and whether their number of ingredients or the number of additives predict these processing and naturalness perceptions. For that, we conducted a think-aloud ranking task to examine 26 packaged foods under two experimental conditions (nnaturalness = 75, nprocessing = 75) in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Our results indicated a very high correlation between processing and naturalness perceptions, suggesting that these constructs overlap for laypeople. Furthermore, the participants used the same cues to assess both processing level and naturalness, consistently mentioning ingredient-related cues. Specifically, we observed strong correlations between the products' number of ingredients and their processing and naturalness assessments. For other cues, such as the number of food additives, much lower associations were observed. Hence, the use of the number of ingredients can be viewed as a heuristic that consumers use when evaluating food products. Reliance on this heuristic may not necessarily result in biased decisions, but it can lead to suboptimal choices from a sustainability and nutritional perspective.
PMID:
42946262
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 28 Oct 2026.
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