ABSTRACTA virtual shopping task was employed to illuminate why women who intend to shop healthily are differentiallysuccessful in doing so. Female undergraduates (N = 68) performed a modified approach and avoidance task thatemployed food items differing in healthiness and tastiness, and yielded relative speed to select and reject fooditems in a stylised supermarket. Participants categorised a food item either in terms of healthiness or tastiness,then pulled (selected) or pushed (rejected) the item using a joystick. Participants showed faster selection of tastyfood after categorisation in terms of tastiness, irrespective of the food's healthiness. However, after categor-isation in terms of healthiness, only more successful healthy food shoppers showed faster selection of healthyitems regardless of tastiness. Less successful healthy food shoppers showed this effect only for tasty food, anddisplayed faster rejection of food items not considered tasty, regardless of their assessed healthiness. Thus, whenparticipants who reported the greatest gap between their shopping intention and shopping behaviour werejudging the healthiness of food items, their speed to select and reject items continued to be influenced bytastiness. This suggests that reducing incidental processing of food tastiness may reduce the intention-behaviourgap in healthy food shopping.