European Journal of Nutrition & Food Safety

Background: There is evidence to suggest consumers feel required to make compromises between enjoyability and healthfulness of food [1]. Implicit in this suggestion is that “healthy” foods are not as enjoyable as “unhealthy” foods. Concurrently it is recognised that descriptors applied to food can influence acceptance [2] and that men may have more negative associations with healthy food than women [3]. This research aimed to investigate gender differences in how perceptions of palatability change if yoghurt is described as healthy amongst Coventry University students. 
Methods: Convenience sampling was used to recruit 85 (female n=44, 51.7%) Coventry University undergraduate and postgraduate students to take part in this pre-piloted single blind experimental study. Participants were provided with three 25g samples of yoghurt, two of which were identical but described differently. Participants were presented with one sample of strawberry yoghurt at a time, with samples a, b and c verbally described as “a strawberry yoghurt”, “a different strawberry yoghurt”, “a healthy strawberry yoghurt” respectively. Samples a and c were the same.
After tasting each sample, participants were asked to rate how strongly they agreed with 6 statements using a 5 point Likert scale. Statements focused on taste, texture, expectation of taste, appearance, likelihood of purchase and overall enjoyment of the sample. They were also asked to rank the samples in order of preference. Results were analysed using Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and Mann Whitney U tests. This research was approved by the Coventry University Research Ethics Committee. 
Results: When the sample was described as healthy, female participants reported lower overall enjoyment (Z= -2.743, p=0.006) and enjoyment of taste (Z= -3.084, p=0.002) than when the sample was not described as healthy. They also agreed less strongly that they would buy the product in a shop (Z= -2.296, p=0.022) when the healthy descriptor was applied. 
Male participants reported agreeing more strongly that the product tasted better than expected when described as healthy compared to when the product was not described as healthy (Z= -2.340, p=0.019). 
There was a trend towards female participants being less likely to report preferring the yoghurt sample described as healthy over other samples than male participants (U=725.5, Z= -1.807, p=0.071).
Discussion: The results of this study were in contrast to both previous literature and expectations [3]. Male participants were less negatively affected by the yoghurt samples being described as healthy than females when it was hypothesised that they would be more influenced. 
It is suggested that the results of this study may be influenced by increased female exposure to both foods described as healthy and to yoghurt. 
Conclusion: Describing yoghurt as healthy negatively affected female participants’ overall enjoyment of the sample, however, more research is required to establish whether this occurs in other population groups or with different foods and descriptors.