What you wear can influence what you eat…

Wang and colleagues link clothing worn and food selections made, it may be possible to apply their findings  more generally, but whether this sort of extension is reasonable will need to be directly investigated.   The Wang-lead team found that “formal and informal clothes styles can activate different clothes-image associations and thus make consumers more likely choose a food type (healthy or unhealthy) that is congruent with a specific set of clothes-image associations, referred to as clothes-food congruence. For example, wearing formal clothes can activate such formal-clothes associations as being self-controlled and organised. Formal- (vs. informal-) clothes associations are perceived to be congruent with healthy (vs. unhealthy) food choices. Hence, we suggest that clothes-food congruence mediates the relationship between clothes-image associations and food choice.”

Xuehua Wang, Xiaoyu Wang, Jing Lei, and Mike Chao.  “The Clothes That Make You Eat Healthy:  The Impact of Clothes Style on Food Choice.”  Journal of Business Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.10.063