Investigating how food insecurity shapes the effect of visual salience on food choices and what it means for cue-based interventions

This study tested whether food insecurity increases the effect of visual salience on food selection. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups; a control, a healthy-salience and an unhealthy-salience group. Dish selection was analyzed using chi-square and likelihood-ratio tests. Cue susceptibility was tested using Kruskal–Wallis tests across different levels of food insecurity. Participants experiencing food insecurity were not more responsive to visually accentuated cues. They also did not report higher susceptibility to promotional cues. For food retailers and public health actors, this points to more caution in how behavioral tools like salience are applied.