Healthy Food Is Not Just a Personal Choice

Every day we face a simple yet often difficult question: what will we eat? Around us, fresh and highly nutritious food is increasingly expensive and unaffordable, while cheap ultra-processed products are available on every street corner. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2025 report reveals a grim reality. As many as 43.5 percent of Indonesia’s population cannot afford to buy healthy food. Limited access and a higher price per calorie are the main barriers preventing them from living healthier lives. In such a situation, blaming someone for ‘choosing unhealthy food’ is naive and unfair. Food choices are not just about personal preference, but about what can be chosen within economic limitations and the surrounding environment. Believing that everyone has the same freedom to choose their food is a myth that perpetuates injustice.

It is often not realised that what we consume daily is not entirely determined by personal desire. There is a food environment architecture that ‘silently’ shapes our choices, from how food is provided, its price, where we find it, to the messages conveyed through advertising and packaging. This architecture creates a context that systematically influences our decisions. If we want to change people’s eating patterns, we cannot rely solely on individual nutritional education. We must change the architecture of the food environment itself. Studies show that food choices are not a fully rational and measured process. Research in 30 office cafeterias in the Netherlands showed that the arrangement of food on a buffet can increase the visibility of healthy options. By using pricing strategies that support healthy choices, workers significantly increased their purchases of healthy foods like wholemeal sandwiches, low-fat cheese, and fruit.

This study reinforces the finding that our food choices are highly susceptible to subtle nudging strategies in the environment. On the other hand, the effectiveness of nudging also highlights socio-economic inequality. Individuals with lower socio-economic status tend not to have the ‘freedom of choice’ that those with higher status are assumed to possess. The former group faces structural barriers, ranging from more expensive healthy food options and very limited time, to food environments in their communities that are designed to sell and promote ultra-processed food products. A study in Malaysia describes this phenomenon as ‘unhealthy but not by choice’, where low-income individuals face the reality that healthy food (such as fruit and vegetables) is far more expensive per calorie than cheap, energy-dense food. Imagine that with Rp 10,000, a person can only buy a few pieces of fruit or a handful of vegetables. Meanwhile, with the same amount of money, one can easily buy one or two portions of fried snacks or several packets of instant noodles, which are more filling.

This is compounded by ‘time poverty’, where millions of people are forced to choose practical foods that require minimal preparation. They are willing to sacrifice nutrition for convenience. This situation is worsened by a food environment that is deliberately designed to deepen such inequalities. Ultra-processed foods and products high in sugar, salt, and fat (GGL) are widely available at affordable prices, aggressively advertised, and easily accessible in areas populated by low-income groups. The commercial determinants of health are not merely an academic term. The food industry uses intensive marketing that specifically targets certain population groups. The marketing targets of the food industry are often vulnerable groups such as children. Increasingly widespread access to digital platforms has also opened new, more personal, and targeted marketing channels. This style of marketing is increasingly difficult to monitor because technological developments outpace efforts to address their excesses.

To protect vulnerable groups, we need more than just consumer education. A default nudge strategy offers a promising approach. When the default choice (the first option offered) is a healthy one, consumers must make an extra effort to choose an unhealthy option, rather than the other way around. This approach seeks to change the food architecture so that healthy food becomes the easiest and most rational choice for consumers. Article 192 of Government Regulation Number 28 of 2024 on Health actually provides a foundation for controlling risk factors for non-communicable diseases, such as controlling GGL consumption, consuming a diverse, nutritionally balanced, and safe diet, and controlling obesogenic environments. In addition to mandating the central government to determine maximum thresholds for GGL content, this regulation also mandates local governments to establish and implement provisions for low-GGL zones, the implementation of which can vary according to local contexts. One important finding that is often overlooked is that our taste for sweetness and saltiness is not a permanent, innate feature. Taste and perception of flavour can be trained and changed. When children are routinely exposed to foods with lower sugar, salt, and fat content, their taste buds adapt. What they consider a ‘normal’ taste shifts, and healthy choices begin to feel more natural. This is why changing the food environment system is far more sustainable than relying solely on personal education.