Our healthy intentions are being manipulated and abused by the big food brands, writes Haydn Shaughnessy.
If you've never felt suckered by big brand food advertising, read on. If you regularly feel suckered by brands, here's why.
Your habits are being constantly monitored.
The fact that you, and more people like you, go home in the evening and open a bottle of white wine is the trigger for cunning potato crisp manufacturers to repackage those little slices of fat-dripped spud, stamp a resplendent picture of fresh food on the outside of the packet and invite you to down the Chablis with red chilli and soured cream and onion crisps, replete with that sun-drenched image your white wine demands.
For you, the evening's first glass is a reward for commuting, but for the snack industry, your wine glass is a battleground.
Crisp-maker Walkers reinvented its crisp packaging to tempt you - and topped initial sales estimates by 200 per cent for its Sensations range.
Tayto is going the same route with Honest Crisps (so were you selling us dishonest crisps before? What is a dishonest crisp?).
Like the battle over the Chardonnay hour, your lunchtime habits are the focus of the food and beverage industry's concern.
That old coin cleaner Coca-Cola is miffed that people no longer prefer to eat in situ where cans, bottles and draught coke are available. Your preference for a sandwich at the desk, or one on the move, presents Coca-Cola with a headache.
How does it insinuate the world's favourite drink into your lunch break? Coke with food is "one of the strategic pillars of Coca-Cola's brand positioning". Coca-Cola's research aims are to know what the consumer drinks, at what time of day with what type of food. Coca-Cola machines even turn up in carparks.
The power of food branding, packaging and pricing, and the power to make a brand prevalent, is not to be underestimated.
Nestlé, producer of dozens of top brands, including cold tea, has succeeded in selling canned tea drinks, Shun no Kocha ("The Tea of the Season"), based on the concept of "smart, refined, high-quality tea that expresses who you are", in the home of the tea ceremony, Japan.
Or how about a French-style boulangerie chain, Artisée, for the Korean market?
The lengths that food companies are prepared to go, to insinuate themselves in the routines of our lives, are instructive.
The key is routine.
Kraft foods has developed a new concept for its European markets that involves creating total café environments for the student campus.
The approximate uniformity of campus life, according to its brand advisers Landor, enables Kraft to deploy one design concept for its new café environment (hosting Kraft brands) across many European universities and colleges, and, in the process, capture brand awareness in the future AB market.
Consumers, of course, are highly volitional and not just fodder for brand campaigns.
They are, according to market research firm NPD, shifting their focus away from convenience, and towards health.
What this means, though, is that we want to eat more healthily, but we also want to continue eating what we already eat and with no diminution of taste.
That means traditional products need to innovate and the current fad is for low-carb.
Foods such as crisps and sweet drinks belong on the "not good" list but, rather than forsake them, consumers want them returned, to low-carb versions.
Miller Lite's low-carb beer was a brand saver - Miller having lost market share to Coors and Budweiser.
Because consumers want more of the same, only a bit healthier, health policymakers should, say psychologists at the University of Illinois, downplay the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods.
If the distinction is too pronounced, people won't make the change. If the shift looks marginal, the chances of persuading people are higher.
Although prone to fads, consumers are also beginning to demand more fresh food.
Some of the health messages are clearly getting across. Research at the University of Illinois, however, shows that we are extremely poor at plotting a route to healthy eating.
Help is at hand, at least in the form of understanding better why we make food choices.
We prefer our changes to be marginal. But we are ill-adept at piloting our way through brand and food sales strategies.
This can be seen in research on food-buying impulses.
Some 12 per cent of all fresh food purchased goes to waste in the home, sometimes bought for recipes that never get made. But another reason is that supermarket sales signs tend to provoke impulse over-buying.
This, apparently, is simply a matter of including numbers in price labels. For example, three for the price of two, or two for €3. The number triggers multiple purchases of one item. But over-purchased fresh food goes to waste, in turn creating dissatisfaction with eating fresh food, when food has to be thrown away.
Another finding is that, while men opt for hot, labour-intensive comfort foods, such as casseroles, women tend to opt for labour-free comfort foods, such as "lite" snacks (and, of course, crisps with that Chardonnay).
Bad eating habits become part of women's relaxation ritual, whereas for men, the potential is there to over-eat and to eat too limited a diet.
At the same time, attempts to promote and facilitate healthy eating are confounded, not only by brand and sales strategies but also by ignorance over how and when to prepare fresh food.
There is, it seems, much to be gained by understanding habits that influence our eating choices.
One potential gain is that health policymakers could direct their health campaigns more astutely and with due recognition that the competition out there is profoundly well informed, superbly resourced and ingenious.
Eating healthily is now a consumer requirement, as long as they don't have to eat differently. Healthy eating habits are on the increase, dependent more than anything on consumers knowing what to do with all that fresh food.
• Haydn Shaughnessy is a journalist and part-time chef.