Dieting, priming, food meanings and (un)healthy choices: When shoppers fall for pleasure

This article seeks to establish what factors predispose some consumers to non-consciously fall for palatable food choices. To achieve this, 1) a qualitative exploration of food meanings possessed by (non)dieting consumers (N =20) and 2) a grocery shopping-prime experiment (N =197) are conducted. Dieting consumers appear to have a more hedonic food-orientation, feel guiltier towards eating, struggle more with resistance of temptation, express less skepticism towards marketing actions, possess a narrower health control focus and appreciate less the role of food in life happiness. Thus, they are more easily prey to many implicit food cues in supermarkets.