Why People Drink Shampoo? Food Imitating Products Are Fooling Brains and Endangering Consumers for Marketing Purposes

A Food Imitating Product (FIP) is a household cleaner or a personal care product that exhibits food attributes in order to enrich consumption experience. As revealed by many cases worldwide, such a marketing strategy led to unintentional self-poisonings and deaths. FIPs therefore constitute a very serious health and public policy issue. To understand why FIPs are a threat, we first conducted a qualitative analysis on real-life cases of household cleaners and personal care products-related phone calls at a poison control center followed by a behavioral experiment. Unintentional self-poisoning in the home following the accidental ingestion of a hygiene product by a healthy adult is very likely to result from these products being packaged like foodstuffs. Our hypothesis is that FIPs are non-verbal food metaphors that could fool the brain of consumers. We therefore conducted a subsequent functional neuroimaging (fMRI) experiment that revealed how visual processing of FIPs leads to cortical taste inferences. Considered in the grounded cognition perspective, the results of our studies reveal that healthy adults can unintentionally categorize a personal care product as something edible when a food-like package is employed to market nonedible and/or dangerous products. Our methodology combining field (qualitative) and laboratory (behavioral and functional neuroimaging) findings could be of particular relevance for policy makers, as it can help screening products prior to their market release – e.g. the way they are packaged and how they can potentially confuse the mind of consumers – and therefore save lives.仿食品产品（Food Imitating Product，FIP）是指为丰富消费体验而具备食品相关属性的家用清洁剂或个人护理产品。全球范围内的多起案例表明，此类营销策略曾引发误食中毒乃至死亡的意外事故。因此，仿食品产品构成了极为严峻的健康与公共政策议题。为探明仿食品产品为何会构成威胁，研究团队首先针对毒物控制中心接到的与家用清洁剂、个人护理产品相关的真实来电案例开展了质性分析，随后又进行了一项行为实验。健康成年人在家中不慎误食卫生产品而引发意外中毒，极有可能是因为该类产品的包装与食品包装相似所致。本研究提出的假设为：仿食品产品属于非语言性食品隐喻，可误导消费者的大脑认知。为此，研究团队后续开展了一项功能神经成像（fMRI）实验，揭示了对仿食品产品的视觉处理如何引发大脑皮层的味觉推断。从具身认知视角来看，本研究的结果表明：当非食用或具有危险性的产品采用类食品包装进行营销时，健康成年人会在无意间将此类个人护理产品归类为可食用物品。本研究采用结合实地（质性）与实验室（行为学及功能神经成像）的研究方法，对政策制定者具有重要参考价值：该方法可助力政策制定者在产品上市前开展筛查——例如审查产品包装设计，评估其是否可能误导消费者认知，从而挽救生命。