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The purpose of this paper is to establish whether food products carry qualitatively different healthfulness images in consumers’ minds. The images explored in this paper go beyond the conventional healthful vs unhealthful dichotomy. The limitations of mainstream healthfulness perception research were pinpointed and a multi-dimensional conception of food product healthfulness images was introduced in an attempt to extend current theorizing.

A pilot test (n=17) was conducted to develop a tool for measuring multi-dimensional healthfulness images of food products. The main study (n=1,081) comprised of an internet survey exposing respondents to pictures of various commercial food products.

Empirical support for the existence of qualitatively different healthfulness images in consumers’ minds for food products was found. First, a food product perceived in overall as more unhealthful than its counterpart was still viewed as more healthful in certain specific way. Second, respondents reported to yield dissimilar health benefits (e.g. energy and appearance vs emotional well-being and self-management) from consuming two food products that were in overall perceived as equally healthful.

In their communication, food marketers should emphasize those healthfulness image dimensions that consumers strongly perceive to characterize their food product. Second, companies can learn from analyzing the role of their own and competitors’ branding and packaging solutions in shaping consumers’ food product healthfulness image experiences. Third, consumer target group understanding is helpful in managing these experiences.

The results can assist in the fight against obesity. It is possible that the wider use of more emotionally evocative and cognitively effortless food-related communication enabled by uncovering of qualitative healthfulness images can produce more healthy food choices in the long run due to their higher persuasive power in certain consumer groups.

This study was the first to show that food products can carry qualitatively different healthfulness images in consumers’ minds. It developed and introduced an easy measuring technique, based on the health-related motive orientation theory, for capturing them. It propagated for a multi-dimensional conception of food product healthfulness images and for the need to acknowledge the role holistic information processing and peripheral cues in their genesis.