The influence of aesthetic plating on food evaluation and perception: A cross-cultural study

The spike in obesity worldwide has prompted a slew of nutritional information policies and healthy eating nudges that aim to improve people's diets. Of all the strategies that have proposed, changing consumers’ perceptions and evaluations of healthy food through aesthetic plating may be an untested, yet effective and low-cost approach to encourage healthy eating globally. The present study explored how different plating aesthetics types affect the evaluations of high and low-calorie foods by Eastern and Western consumers. Valid data were collected from 181 Chinese subjects and 177 American subjects. The result showed that both Easterners and Westerners agree when low-calorie foods plated with classical aesthetics look healthier than those with expressive aesthetics. What is more, the low-calorie foods with classical (vs. expressive) aesthetics plating appear to Westerners to be more tasty, likable, and appealing to consumers. Easterners, on the other hand, thought that the aforementioned foods with expressive (vs. classical) aesthetics plating were tastier, but they had no more favorable attitudes or purchase intentions towards them. In conclusion, our results suggest that the type of plating aesthetics can influence consumers’ evaluation of healthy food, and this evaluation differs depending on cultural background. Thus, aesthetic plating may be an ally in the worldwide promotion of healthy eating when combining healthy food with an aesthetic plating design that maximizes food enjoyment for multicultural groups.