Why you might want to turn down those free food samples at the store

From Costco to Sam’s Club, free food samples are sometimes only a bite away when grocery shopping. But even the healthiest of them can lead to unhealthy choices, according to a new study.

Published recently in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, researchers led by University of South Florida professor of marketing Dipayan Biswas completed a series of experiments on how food samples influence in-store purchases. They discovered some unexpected outcomes.

“Our study looked at whether a free complimentary healthy food item can actually be bad for you,” Biswas said in a news release. “What we found was that getting one at a store or restaurant can lead consumers to subsequently purchase indulgent foods.”

The researchers completed several studies before coming to their conclusion, including experimenting with samples offered at restaurants, a field experiment at a food store and a control condition experiment in their lab. The results showed people who sample healthy bites are more likely to purchase unhealthy food during their shopping.

More research is needed to be sure, researchers said, but a possible explanation for the unhealthy purchases came down to how eating a healthy snack made people feel. When the samples were perceived as being good for you, but the surrounding food for sale is seen as unhealthy, shoppers may have felt they deserved a treat after eating a healthy snack.

“Consumers need to know how initial food sampling might influence their overall purchases,” the research paper explained. “Therefore, at a food store or food court, consumers need to keep in mind that having the healthy bite-sized option might give them the feeling of virtuousness to subsequently indulge if these different activities are perceived as being dissimilar. Additional research is needed to examine how perceived mental accounts or episodes across different activities might influence the effects observed in our studies.”