How Can Healthy Food Content Be Made Popular On Social Media?

In today’s world, our diets are often packed with fats and sugars. Our ancient instinct to crave calorie-rich foods, which once helped us survive, now leads to harmful health side effects.

To counteract this, food content creators on social media have been trying to encourage healthy eating and healthy eating content.

So, the challenge is clear: How do we make healthy foods as click-worthy as their unhealthy counterparts?

Food marketing on social media

Social media has become a billboard for food advertising. Food companies are everywhere online, but their focus is usually on calorie-packed products. They make these foods seem fun and shareable, even though many of us would be better off seeing healthier options.

This mismatch between what food companies promote and what is good for consumers is glaring. Posts with unhealthy food get more love and are remembered, seen and shared more than posts featuring healthier foods.

There’s a mismatch between what food companies promote and what’s actually good for us. (AI generated)

Why we love junk: An evolutionary tale

Today, this means we naturally feel good and get excited when seeing calorie-packed foods. This same excitement simply does not occur when exposed to low-calorie alternatives, which we often see as less tasty, not as enjoyable and likely not satisfying.

What if we could switch our minds to avoid the biased decisions we make when we rely on our feelings? The idea of ​​using a more thoughtful mindset is a strategy that’s been shown to work on other food habits.

The potential here is huge: thinking more thoughtfully and analytically could reduce our biases for relying more on our feelings to make decisions, and this can make healthier, lower-calorie foods more attractive, leading to more likes and shares on social media.

The above-mentioned research took a look at how people react to social media content about food. It was found that people are usually less interested in posts about healthier, lower-calorie food, something that has been shown in previous studies.

The research team used videos from Tasty, a popular food network, for their experiment.

In the experiment, people were more likely to engage with a video about making a burger than a salad. But when people take the time to think about what foods they’re actually engaging with, they can appreciate the benefits of lower-calorie foods, potentially leading them to choose healthier options.

Actions for a healthier social media

As prior research has demonstrated, people are naturally drawn to social media posts of unhealthy food, leaving healthier options in the dust. The more engagement these calorie-packed posts get, the more similar content floods our feeds, creating a cycle that can potentially negatively affect our real-life eating habits.

It’s possible to steer our mindsets towards making healthier food decisions. (AI generated)

Short mindfulness exercises from programs like Noom or WeightWatchers can also help us pause and think before we eat.

This new research can inspire dietitians, health advocates, policy makers and content creators to use this mindset magic when they’re designing their products, services or social media posts. This could lead to more engagement with healthier food content on social media, making these messages healthier to travel further.