The healthy trend of recent times has surely not gone unnoticed. The first healthy fast food chain to open its doors, the shelves of the supermarkets that are becoming increasingly full of salads and gyms that can now be found on every street corner. People nowadays consciously choose healthy. Because more and more research has been done into how (un)healthy some products really are, people are now much better able to make conscious choices about nutrition.

Not fitting in with this trend is that the meeting croquette is still just as popular and is even indispensable on the lunch buffet of our meeting and conference locations. Despite the fact that there is often a well-stocked buffet with a large healthy assortment, people find such a meeting croquette very tasty. We were curious why the meeting croquette wins from this healthy trend, so we went to investigate:

Vicarious Purpose Fulfillment

Psychologist Fitzsimons discovered during his research that when people have the option of healthy eating, they often choose unhealthy. He calls this behavior “vicarious fulfillment of goals”: ​​only seeing a healthy choice satisfies psychologically the need to be “healthy”. So actually it's not "despite" all the healthy food on buffets but "because". The Algemeen Dagblad also says that compensatory behavior can play a role in making an unhealthy choice: “I do earn a croquette because I sit in meetings all day.”

So there are quite a few psychological considerations behind the meeting croquette. But apart from all that psychology: A croquette is really tasty from time to time. And that is why they remain indispensable on the lunch buffets.