You go to your local grocery store to buy a frozen pizza and walk out with a bag of frozen peas on the side. (Well, they
were sitting right next to the Three-Cheese Pie.) Or maybe you visit the produce aisle and find yourself feeling as if you're in a cozy kitchen -- the lights are diffused, and they're shining right on those turnips. Why not buy turnips for dinner, you think. Huh? Where did that come from?
The marketers who tempt you with end-of-aisle displays of wildly colored cereal boxes and eye-level rows of boxed mac-and-cheese are now being employed by supermarkets to help customers select more fresh food,
reports NPR. Moving fresh food to the front of the store works (the path of least resistance usually does), Brian Wansink, the co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Program told NPR. When stores change their marketing schemes, such as trading in the harsh fluorescent bulbs for softer, more direct spotlights, he says, they sell around 30 percent more.
Let's face it. Produce spoils and the markets have to move it or lose it. That it's also better for you than a bag of chips is the bonus. And consumers are trying to eat more healthy foods, or at least that's what we claim. Just remember when you reach for the veggies, that placement, lighting, and even signage (calling eggplant "French aubergine," for example), are now giving you a helping hand.