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  • 2009
  • Article
  • Journal of the American Dietetic Association

Modeling Expert Opinions on Food Healthfulness: A Nutrition Metric

By: Jolie M. Martin, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, Max H. Bazerman and Lisa Sutherland
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:4
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Abstract

Research over the last several decades indicates the failure of existing nutritional labels to substantially improve the healthiness of consumers' food and beverage choices. The difficulty for policy-makers is to encapsulate a wide body of scientific knowledge in a labeling scheme that is comprehensible to the average shopper. Here, we describe our method of developing a nutrition metric to fill this void.

Methods

We asked leading nutrition experts to rate the healthiness of 205 sample foods and beverages, and after verifying the similarity of their responses, we generated a model that calculates the expected average healthiness rating that experts would give to any other product based on its nutrient content.

Results

The form of the model is a linear regression that places weights on 12 nutritional components (total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, sugars, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, and iron) to predict the average healthiness rating that experts would give to any food or beverage. We provide sample predictions for other items in our database.

Conclusions

Major benefits of the model include its basis in expert judgment, its straightforward application, the flexibility of transforming its output ratings to any linear scale, and its ease of interpretation. This metric serves the purpose of distilling expert knowledge into a form usable by consumers so that they are empowered to make healthier decisions.

Keywords

Judgments; Food; Nutrition; Labels; Knowledge Use And Leverage; Demand And Consumers; Measurement And Metrics; Mathematical Methods

Citation

Martin, Jolie M., John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, Max H. Bazerman, and Lisa Sutherland. "Modeling Expert Opinions on Food Healthfulness: A Nutrition Metric." Journal of the American Dietetic Association 109, no. 6 (June 2009): 1088–1091.
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About The Authors

John Beshears

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

Max H. Bazerman

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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  • Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Mitigates Self-Serving Bias in Resource Allocation During the COVID-19 Crisis By: Karen Huang, Regan Bernhard, Netta Barak-Corren, Max Bazerman and Joshua D. Greene
  • Social Salary Setting at Spiber By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears
  • Nudging: Progress to Date and Future Directions By: John Beshears and Harry Kosowsky
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