Recently it came to light that stores are using gender stereotypes to sell products to certain targeted groups of consumers. In light of this, people have been paying a lot of attention lately to how products are packaged. They are very sensitive to people using gender stereotypes to market certain products, even pressuring stores to reorganize their products. This has been found to be especially true of children’s toys and hygiene products such as razors. But have you ever paid close attention to the way food products are marketed to us?

I love food, and as a consequence of this I love grocery shopping, I love finding delicious new things to play around with in the kitchen. I also love to eat as healthy as possible and therefore I love looking for new health foods and trends. However, it has come to my attention that it is not only toys that are subject to gender-oriented product packaging. Did you know that the same company makes Luna Bars and Clif Bars? It makes sense, they are both energy bars, both know for their great flavors and their relatively healthy ingredients. However, one is marketed for women and one is marketed for men. The Luna Bar website claims its bar “is where nutritious meets delicious” while the Clif website claims its bar will help you “eat like an athlete.” The Luna Bar’s packaging is mainly blue and brightly colored while the Clif Bar is mainly brown with other colors that would be more associated with a masculine idea. They are both energy bars, made by the same company with similar ingredients, so why are they packaged differently?

GNC is a supplement company that sells a lot of Whey Protein. Whey Protein is a supplement often used by athletes and body-builders. They have a different type of protein, called Her Whey, which comes in a pink container (differing from the usual red) and flavors called chocolate éclair and vanilla cupcake (as opposed to just regular chocolate and vanilla).

Products such as these that are marketed differently for men than they are for women make me wonder if people really buy (and keep buying) the product because of its substance or because of its packaging. A study called "Macho Nachos: Implicit Effects of Gendered Food Packaging on Preferences for Healthy and Unhealthy Foods" by Zhu, Brescoll, Newman, and Uhlmann looks at how the packaging of a product can influence who buys and enjoys it. In a series of studies, they changed the packaging of the a certain food to masculine, feminine or neutral packaging and asked their participants to rate which they preferred, how the food (which in the individual studies would have all been the same) tasted and how much they would pay for the food. They found that overall, their male participants were more likely to buy, enjoy and pay more for food that was subtly marketed toward them while women were more likely to buy, enjoy and pay more for the same food when it was subtly marketed for them. Their research shows that because people associate certain images or colors found on packaging with their own gender, they are more likely to choose and enjoy that food than the same food with packaging that they have not previously associated with themselves.

This study shows us that when we’re in the grocery store and are drawn to pick up certain products from the shelves, it may not be our conscious thought that is making the decision, but the stereotypes working in our brains, making us think that a product is perfect for us. Some products may actually have benefits for one gender over another and I'm not trying to say that gender-geared productsare bad, but we do have to watch out for gender-geared packaging. We need to look beyond what is presented to us on the shelves of the grocery store.

Carlon Campbell

Here's the study if you want to check it out:

Zhu, L., Brescoll, V., Newman, G., & Uhlmann, E. (2015). Macho Nachos: Implicit Effects of Gendered Food Packaging on Preferences for Healthy and Unhealthy Foods. Social Psychology,46(4), 182-196. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000226