Abstract
Sustainability concerns are increasingly shaping food policies, yet the widespread adoption of sustainable food products remains limited. Among the strategies adopted to address environmental challenges in the food system, upcycled foods represent a promising solution. However, despite their potential environmental benefits, upcycled foods still face substantial resistance at the consumer level. This is due primarily to cognitive biases that shape expectations under conditions of uncertainty, giving rise to significant barriers. Grounded in consumer neuroscience and expectancy-based theories, the present study investigates how brief pre-consumption informational cues can prime consumers’ evaluative processes during tasting and influencing acceptance beyond purely sensory responses. A within-subject experiment was conducted with forty participants who evaluated five fruit marmalades differing in production method (conventional vs. upcycled agriculture) and functional enrichment. Each product was tasted under blind conditions and after exposure to informational priming messages describing production processes, sustainability and nutritional related features. Neurophysiological activity was recorded via electroencephalography and physiological measures. In parallel, participants provided self-reports of liking, perceived quality, and sensory attributes. Results show that informational priming significantly affected both neurophysiological and declarative responses, with effects varying across product types. While self-reported liking and quality generally increased following priming, neurophysiological markers revealed a less positive pattern, highlighting dissociations between implicit processing and explicit judgments. These findings demonstrate how pre-consumption information can bias product evaluation by shaping expectations and implicit cognitive processing and underscore the added value of consumer neuroscience methods in capturing effects that remain partially inaccessible to self-report measures. Communication strategies operating before consumption can thus influence the evaluation of upcycled foods, offering insights for their promotion and adoption.
