Do Weight Watchers Want More Options? How Activating Self-Regulatory Concerns Triggers the Need for Variety

In daily life food variety has become omnipresent. When dining out or grocery shopping consumers can select between a variety of different dishes and products. On the upside, these strategies correspond with individuals’ preference for variety in food consumption and provide them with higher consumption utility (Kahn & Wansink, 2004). On the downside, food variety fosters increased consumption (Rolls et al., 1981). Parallel to this trend, weight watching has become a recurring theme in present-day life. When reading magazines or watching TV, one is bombarded with information on dieting programs, creating the impression that watching one’s weight is the status quo. Considering these recent developments in combination, the question that presents itself is whether weight concerns, in general, and restricting one’s food intake, in particular, could influence individuals’ need for variety: Do individuals who restrict their food intake seek more or less variety than individuals free from self-regulatory concerns? When individuals are concerned about their weight, they restrict their food intake and adhere to self-imposed demands instead of listening to physiologically determined satiety boundaries (Herman & Polivy, 1984). This brings about stronger hedonic responses to highly tempting food (Hofmann, et al., 2009). In fact, when individuals restrict their food intake, they constantly ruminate about food and evaluate food stimuli in terms of pleasure that can be derived from eating. Accordingly, restricting one’s food intake provokes a struggle between adhering to self-imposed demands and the desire to maximize pleasure from eating. Consuming the same kind of food easily results in habituation and decreases enjoyment of that particular food (Epstein et al., 2009) while eating a variety of different food is expected to bring about higher anticipated levels of consumption utility (Kahn & Wansink, 2004).