A New Obsession with Minimalism – and the Behavioural Science Marketing Driving Consumers to Make Poor Choices

There’s a growing obsession with short ingredient lists.

“Only 3 ingredients.”

“No nasties.”

“Nothing you can’t pronounce.”

It’s become a go-to way of signalling health and wholesomeness. But in the race to make food look ‘cleaner’, we’ve oversimplified the message. The idea that fewer ingredients = better for you is appealing, but it’s also misleading.

And from a behavioural science point of view, it’s easy to see how we got here.

Why Shortcuts Stick: Framing, Anchoring and Heuristics

When people are busy, distracted, or overwhelmed, we all rely on mental shortcuts to make decisions. In behavioural science, these are called heuristics. They help us get to an answer quickly – but not always accurately.

This is classic System 1 thinking, as described by Daniel Kahneman. It’s fast, instinctive, and effortless. We need System 1 to get through the day – it’s what helps us navigate a world full of decisions without grinding to a halt. But the trade-off is that we don’t always stop to check the facts or engage the slower, more analytical System 2, which requires effort and attention. System 2 is where we weigh up trade-offs, read the nutrition panel properly, or question whether "3 ingredients" really tells us anything meaningful.

Supermarket shelves are the perfect environment for heuristics and System 1 thinking to take hold. With hundreds of products and limited time, consumers don’t sit and read every label. They look for cues. And right now, the cue that’s winning is “short ingredient list = healthy choice.” We have more categories and SKUs than ever before in the history of humanity. My local Tesco Extra has 36 different fruit jams... I counted them once.

This is where framing plays a role. The way something is presented, “only 3 ingredients”, feels like a health claim, even when it isn’t. It nudges shoppers into making a quick judgment without slowing down to think about what’s actually in the product.

We’re also seeing anchoring in action. The number of ingredients becomes the first piece of information we notice, and everything else gets judged against that number. Suddenly, anything with more than three or four ingredients starts to look ‘bad’, no matter the context.

The Health Halo Effect: When Less Feels Like More

All of this contributes to what’s known as the health halo effect. That’s when one positive-sounding feature, like a short ingredient list, creates the assumption that the whole product is healthy. And that assumption often goes unchallenged.

Take M&S Cornflakes, for example. Marketed with just one ingredient – corn – they fit the brief of simplicity perfectly. But here’s the issue: by stripping out other ingredients, they’ve also removed the fortification that many cereals come with. No added iron, folic acid or B12 – nutrients that are important for people who are often deficient, particularly women, children and lower-income households.

So while it looks ‘cleaner’, it’s actually offering less – and not in a good way.

It’s a great example of how framing and heuristics can lead people down the wrong path. A well-intentioned shift toward “real food” becomes a reason to buy something that’s less nutritious than the version we’re being told to avoid.

You see the same thing happening with some foods that would classically be categorised as UPFs, but actually come with impressive health and environmental benefits. A good example is the meat alternatives market – think 'This' or 'Huel'. These products are being unfairly vilified just because they’re processed.

What’s not to love about packing more veg, fibre and nutrients into your dinner? Of course, it needs processing to make beans look like meat – but that’s the point. There’s a lot of science and nutrition work behind these products, often from people far more qualified than any of us. That shouldn’t be dismissed so easily.

Why Nutritionists Are Losing the Narrative

Many nutritionists are frustrated. My favourites – Barbara Bray and Ali Morpeth – have a lot to say on this, and they’re well worth a follow on LinkedIn for their thoughtful posts and podcast contributions on sustainable diets.

In this drive toward minimalism, nutritionists have been left blinking in disbelief that the message has been taken out of context and hijacked by marketers to make a quick buck. (I can say that as a former marketer.)

The original message around ultra-processed foods wasn’t about how many ingredients a product had – it was about how it was made, the level of processing, and the purpose of the ingredients used.

But that nuance has been lost. Marketers have simplified the story because a tidy message is easier to sell. And now, as Dr Federica Amati (Head Nutritional Scientist at ZOE) alluded to, the UPF debate has been twisted . You can read more on her thoughts about breakfast cereal here:here.

When we shift the focus from whole foods and balance to ingredient count alone, we stop asking the better questions:

• Is this food actually nourishing?

• Are the ingredients familiar and available in a standard kitchen or supermarket?

• Is anything important being left out – like fibre, protein or essential vitamins?

  
  

The Role of Marketers: Responsibility or Redirection?

Let’s be honest – marketers are good at this stuff. We know how to position products, simplify claims, and influence behaviour in milliseconds.

But with that skill comes a responsibility.

We’ve seen what happens when the food industry gets messaging wrong. Think back to the 1990s and the low-fat craze. Products were stripped of fat and loaded with sugar instead. The message was simple – and deeply unhelpful. The clean eating movement of the 2010s followed the same pattern. And now we’re in danger of doing it again with ingredient count.

We can’t keep nudging people into oversimplified decisions just because it sells. Because once trust is lost – whether from consumers, regulators, or public health voices – it’s hard to get back.

What Should We Be Saying Instead?

This isn’t about swinging to the other extreme. Ingredient simplicity can be a good thing – if it’s tied to quality, whole foods, and transparency. But fewer doesn’t automatically mean better.

So how do we reframe the message?

Let’s shift the focus to:

🛒 Can I find these ingredients in a supermarket or at home?

🌾 Are they whole, familiar, and included for a reason?

💡 Does this product add something useful – fibre, protein, fortification – or is it just a tidied-up version of something nutritionally empty?

Final Thoughts: Better Isn’t Fewer. Better Is Better.

It’s time to stop treating the number of ingredients as a health claim. Food is more complicated than that – and so are people. The real challenge is giving consumers tools they can trust, not just rules they can memorise.

As marketers, we can keep playing the short-term game of buzzwords and shelf appeal. Or we can step up and be part of something bigger – a food system that informs, empowers, and genuinely supports healthier, more sustainable diets.

Fewer doesn’t equal better. Better equals better.

And better means thinking beyond the label...Oh no – we’re back to food systems thinking and I’m writing this on a Saturday morning, so it’s just got complicated again.