The food packaging tricks we all fall for

Don’t be fooled: the red net bags oranges come in can make even green fruit appear orange. Photo / Getty Images
From oranges in red net bags to noisy packaging, these are the psychological hacks that brands use to maximise their sales.
Those oranges in the supermarket may not be as orange as you think. A recent article in the scientific journal Perception reveals how the red netting bag they come in can make even green fruit appear orange, in an optical illusion known as the “confetti effect”. The vivid yellow netting on lemons does the same job of intensifying the citrus’s colour to make it more alluring. Out of the bags, the fruit will seem less vivid and, yes, possibly even tinged with green.
It makes you wonder – what else is going on in the world of packaging to tempt us into buying? Chances are that wrapper we so casually toss in the recycling, compost or rubbish bin has been worked on by teams of designers, brand managers, merchandisers and psychologists, all with the aim of nudging us to pick up their product.
I’d like to think I’m making rational choices about what I put in my trolley. But as Thom Noble, president of neuroscience-driven marketing company Cloud Army puts it, “that’s not the way the mind typically makes decisions – 90% of the decisions, and our perceptions, are all formed at the nonconscious level.” Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, adds, “purchasing is primarily done by eye. Visually … [most of] our food choices in the supermarket are based on colour.”
While we might not have the time or energy to make considered choices as we whizz down the aisles, understanding the game marketeers are playing with our instincts will give us a sporting chance of ending up with the right food in our basket. Forewarned is forearmed: all is not as it seems.
The confetti effect involves using the same colour as the product, albeit a few shades brighter and mesh on top to make food colour more intense. But for most packaging, the colours sit beside the product, often around a cellophane window. In this case, designers choose a contrasting but complementary colour from the opposite side of the colour wheel, which makes the product look more zingy. Take Barilla, with the strong blue bringing out the golden notes of the pasta, or the turquoise of the baked beans tin, “the perfect colour contrast to make the beans look especially red,” says Spence.
Other than that, there are the obvious colour cues: purple for berry flavours, green for lime (and also for vegetables generally). But there are subtle subliminal associations too – which vary according to context, says Noble. Red makes us think of sweetness, although it’s also used to imply chilli heat, while yellow is the colour of sunshine and positivity. Red and yellow together – or red on its own – are widely believed to be appetite stimulants (although there’s yet to be solid evidence for this). That’s why they’re the choice of fast food venues including McDonalds, Burger King, Five Guys, KFC and Nando’s.
Green carries connotations of health and eco-friendliness, blue is associated with cold (ice comes in blue bags) and also low-fat or low-calorie foods, while white is used to indicate simplicity and blandness. Deep colours and matte black suggest luxury and are embraced by the supermarkets’ premium ranges, from Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference and Asda Extra Special (different shades of deep purple) to Morrisons’ The Best (slate grey) and Marks and Spencer’s Our Best Ever (black and gold). Tesco uses strong black text on a silver background.
Even the typeface on a packet, or the shape of the graphics, can have an effect on how we feel about a product. In the 1920s, psychologists established that certain word sounds are associated with certain shapes. It’s known as the bouba/kiki effect, with the word “bouba” aligning with soft, rounded edges and “kiki” aligning with sharp, spiky shapes. By extension, sharp words and fonts are matched with sour and bitter tastes, while rounded ones are matched with sweet.
The “semiotics of packaging” reaches to the shape of the package itself says Caroline Hagen of Reach Brands, the company behind the packaging design of staples like New Covent Garden Soup Co and Encona hot sauces. So, “something that is square and minimal is … sharper, whereas a product that’s packaged in something round will be softer and friendlier and more organic.”
Sweet foods like Mars Bars and Coca Cola tend to have chunky lettering in a flowing script, and sour foods often have an angular or asymmetric typeface, like the jaunty Jif lemon or the wobbly Tangfastics from Haribo.
But the indicators may go beyond the font: a jar of Bonne Maman jam has a cursive handwritten-style label and a red gingham lid to suggest it’s sweet, handmade and artisan. Or take the circle on the 7UP logo. As Spence points out, “it’s round and it’s red, and these are the two cues for sweetness.”
Playing French or German music in the wine section of supermarkets has been shown to increase sales of that country’s wine by as much as 330%, even when customers claimed not to be influenced. This disconnect is common, says Noble, and is known as the “say-do gap”, where people don’t want to admit that outside factors have an effect on their actions. It’s the reason why simple surveys so often turn up the wrong result.
The sound of the packaging itself can also affect how we feel about the food. “Noisier packaging is used for noisy food,” says Spence, so crisp packets “accentuate the crunchiness of what’s inside”.
How a product feels – or how it looks like it will feel – matters too. Simply “adding weight to the packaging makes things seem higher quality,” says Spence. His study with one wine merchant showed that for every extra £1 ($2.13) paid for a bottle of wine, the weight of the bottle increases by 8g.
Those net bags of oranges aren’t just about clever colour either, says Hagen. “We all used to buy our oranges in string bags, so [the net bags] are talking to our nostalgia.”
Charlie Bigham, whose high-end dishes grace the supermarkets’ chiller cabinets (he eschews the term “ready meal”, ditched foil and plastic trays in favour of poplar wood versions. The decision was made for environmental reasons, but Bigham says, “fortuitously, the solution we came up with … sent a subliminal message to people as they’re walking down the aisle: this is a bit different, feels and looks a bit artisan.” If the packaging nudges the middle-class mind to think of French cheeses and holidays on the Continent, it’s no surprise: they were inspired by camembert boxes.