James A. Mead

Who they are

Mead is the first author of the paper named below. Beyond this paper, this page holds no biographical detail, and none is guessed. The page does not state his affiliation, which was not confirmed.

Key papers

Mead, J. A., & Richerson, R. (2018). Package color saturation and food healthfulness perceptions. Journal of Business Research, 82, 10-18. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.08.015.

Key ideas

The paper reports four experiments. According to the 2023 review by Steiner and Florack, the products included potato chips and nutrition bars and the studies were run in the United States. The authors found that consumers rated foods in vivid, highly saturated packaging as less healthful than foods in muted packaging.

Their explanation is conceptual fluency. Shoppers meet unhealthy foods in saturated packaging often, so a vivid pack matches the familiar look of an indulgent product and is judged accordingly. The abstract adds two moderators: subjective nutrition knowledge weakened the effect, and restrained eating strengthened it. The paper presents the finding as a new heuristic in the food well-being literature.

The result sits against Kunz and colleagues (2020), who found more saturated drink images rated healthier, and the 2023 review records both. Product category is a candidate explanation, not a tested one. See Colour as a Health Cue, Processing Fluency and Does Green Packaging Look Healthier.

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