Society & Culture - Posted by Krishna Ramanujan-Cornell on Monday, December 10, 2012 10:20 - 5 Comments 
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(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5) Loading ...Why organic labels can be a turn-off
"It's not the case that you can label a food organic and expect that everyone will perceive it more positively," says Jonathon Schuldt. "Under certain circumstances, ethical labels could have an unintended backfire effect." (Credit: Justin Taylor/Flickr)
CORNELL / U. MICHIGAN (US) — Whether an organic food label is a good thing or not depends on the values of the person reading it.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
New research flips the notion of a “halo” effect for ethical food labels. A halo effect is a phenomenon where a label leads consumers to have a positive opinion—and in the case of an organic label, a healthy impression—of those foods.
The two-part study, published in the journal Appetite, shows that some conditions can produce a negative impression of organic labels among consumers, due to their values.
In the first part of the study, Jonathon Schuldt, assistant professor of communication at Cornell University, and Mary Hannahan, a student at the University of Michigan, asked 215 students whether they thought organic food was healthier and also tastier than conventional food.
While most agreed that organics were a healthy choice compared with conventional food, fewer expected organic food to taste good by comparison. This latter finding was especially true for participants who had low concern for the environment.
“The personal values of the rater mattered,” says Schuldt. “Our data suggest when organic practices do not appeal to a consumer’s values, they expect organic food to taste worse.”
In part two of the study, the researchers explored whether there were contexts in which people who were pro-environment might have a negative impression of organic labels. Here, 156 participants read one of two versions of a fake news article that discussed the development of “a highly engineered drink product designed to relieve the symptoms of African children suffering from severe malnutrition.”
To convey the artificial, engineered aspect of the beverage, the article described the drink—named “Relief drink 1.1″—as a “formula” that resulted from a collaboration between “scientists and the food industry.”
In one version of the news article, the engineered drink was described as organic every time the drink was mentioned. The other version never mentioned the word organic. Participants were randomly assigned one version of the news story or the other.
The results showed that participants who were highly pro-environment judged the organic version of the drink to be less effective compared with the non-organic version.
“It’s a reminder that the halo effect hinges on the values of the perceiver,” says Schuldt. “It’s not the case that you can label a food organic and expect that everyone will perceive it more positively. Under certain circumstances, ethical labels could have an unintended backfire effect.”
Future research may involve taste tests of organic and conventional foods to see if personal values influence a taster’s perceptions when actually eating a food.
Source: Cornell University
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5 Comments
kimbee
Ann Fonfa – what do you have against GM food producers? Every kind of farmed vegetable that you eat – organic or not – is genetically modfied I can assure you of that. It used to be called selective breeding and it has been going on for thousands of years. Nowadays we have a much quicker way of doing things which involves selecting the genes we need fir the perfect food product. GM, in comparison to selective breeding is much more efficient, breeding in a characteristic can take many generations – which is not only time but water and resources also. We can also insert special genes that can make the crops resistant to diseases.
Yes I agree with you, it would be lovely if we could all grow our own food in perfectly natural conditions, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed we have a slight problem with food. The planet is overcrowded and the population is only getting bigger, and guess what? WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH FOOD.
So yes it’s very nice to get on your high horse and say that the companies producing GM food are just trying to make more money, but unless food is grown faster then everyone is going to starve. So yes, pesticides are bad I agree. But the alternative is that crops are destroyed, food and land and water are wasted. Or we engineer them to be resistant.
We simply do not have the resources to grow food naturally. Not if we want all 7 billion of us to eat.
And if you’re the type of person who thinks that messing about with genes is going to lead to the creation of some sci-fi abberation then I suggest that you stop advising cancer patients.
Lilah
Labels of any kind are going to give off a different impression for everyone individually. I don’t think that can be entirely avoided. It’s just part of human perception.
Ann – if you don’t like the message – don’t shoot the messenger! Learn from the message to strenghten your work. Learn from the fact that your style of communication is not getting results (you are appealing to too few people!) and consider how to become more effective. Try visiting http://valuesandframes.org/about/
Kimbee- experimenting with genes as you propose could have some merit in a guaranteed closed envirnment (a very very secure lab run by people we could trust) but you want to use my world, my garden, my kitchen, my body as your laboratory – this I cannot accept – I will not be your laboratory animal. As to your false proposal that it is to feed the starving masses – either you are one of the many naive who swallow the grasping businessmen (they seek to keep the poor in poverty through GM licenses) – or you are one them. I shall fight you all the way!
Lilah – you sum up the label issue very well. We have to use inteligence and diligence to understand and use them – the stakes are too high to ignore them!
kimbee
Bring it.
I founded and run as a full-time volunteer, a cancer advocacy nonprofit Annie Appleseed Project with a focus on natural strategies for cancer.
I would like to know WHO the funders were for these quite absurd studies and their ridiculous conclusions.
There is a movement via the Genetically-Modified food producers and their customers, to confuse the public. This fits right in. It’s a bit silly overall. Expecting organic food to taste worse simply means people do not understand what organic means. Organic means NO artificial chemicals were used – no pesticides (designed to kill bugs with chemical poisons, no herbicides – designed to kill plants with chemical poisons.
How could we NOT be better off without poisons?