Heuristics for Healthier Food Selection

Modern food environments challenge people’s capacity to make healthy dietary choices, lead-ing consumers to rely on heuristics—simple decision rules using limited information. Whilepolicies support this by highlighting negative nutrients on food packaging (e.g., sugar), it re-mains unclear whether such rules effectively navigate the complex nutritional trade-offs ofreal markets. We evaluate single-cue heuristics using nutrient data from over 7,600 productsand identify a small set of effective rules. By analysing nutritional profiles from hundreds ofthousands of simulated product choices, we show that a heuristic aimed at reducing energycontent also reduces sugar and saturated fat, and that heuristics targeting fibre or protein in-crease vitamin, mineral, protein, and fibre densities. Heuristics inspired by folk wisdom (e.g.,choosing raw foods or darker grains) yield broader benefits but are category-specific. Thesefindings demonstrate that such heuristics can boost healthy food choices at scale and providedata-driven guidance for nutrition policy.