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People making food choices are often exposed to different cues that can activate relevant goals that influence the choice outcome. Hedonic goals are frequently primed by advertising while health policy enlists primes that activate health goals in the moment of food decision-making - e.g., healthy food labels. However, little is known about the effect of such goal-priming cues on the population level and how people respond when exposed to both types of primes simultaneously. The results of this study, based on a large, representative sample (N = 1200), show no effect of health-goal priming on healthy food choices. Being exposed to a sole hedonic prime, however, reduces healthy choices by 3%. This effect completely disappeared when both primes were presented at the same time. All effects remained insensitive to people's gender, hunger status, level of dietary restraint, and BMI. These findings cast doubt over the effectiveness of health goal primes as a tool to increase healthy food choices but suggest a protective effect against competing hedonic primes and could thereby prevent less healthy choices.

Sweet foods are commonly used as rewards for desirable behavior, specifically among children. This study examines whether such practice may contribute to reinforce the valuation of these foods. Two experiments were conducted, one with children, the other with rats. The first study, conducted with first graders (n = 214), shows that children who receive a food reward for performing a cognitive task subsequently value the food more compared to a control group who received the same food without performing any task. The second study, conducted on rats (n = 64), shows that rewarding with food also translates into higher calorie intake over a 24-hour period. These results suggest that the common practice of rewarding children with calorie-dense sweet foods is a plausible contributing factor to obesity and might therefore be ill advised. © 2021 This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.