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Healthy See, Healthy Do

Visit the grocery store on an empty stomach, and you will probably come home with a few things you did not plan to buy. But hunger is not the only cause of additional purchases. The location of store displays (摆放) also influences our shopping choices.1．

The checkout area is a particular hotspot for junk food. Studies have found that the products most commonly found there are sugary and salty snacks.2． A 2012 study in the Netherlands found that hospital workers were more likely to give up junk food for healthy snacks when the latter were more readily available on canteen shelves, for example. In 2014 Norwegian and Icelandic researchers also found that replacing unhealthy foods with healthy ones in the checkout area significantly increased last-minute sales of healthier foods.

3． It has been working with more than 1,000 store owners to encourage them to order and promote nutritious foods. “We know that the stores are full of cues (暗示) meant to encourage consumption,” says Tamar Adjoian, a research scientist at the department, “Making healthy foods more convenient or appealing can lead to increased sales of those products.”

Adjoian and her colleagues wondered if such findings would apply to their city’s crowded urban checkout areas, so they selected three Bronx supermarkets for their own study. 4． Then they recorded purchases over six three-hour periods in each store for two weeks.

Of the more than 2,100 shoppers they observed, just 4 percent bought anything from the checkout area. Among those who did, however, customers in the healthy lines purchased nutritious foods more than twice as often as those in the standard lines.5． The findings were reported in September in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

The potential influence may seem small, but Adjoian believes that changing more checkout lines would open customers’ eyes to nutritious, lower-calorie foods. Health department officials are now exploring ways to expand healthy options at checkout counters throughout New York City.