A study finds parents and ads can influence what kids eat
Parents may have sway over what their children eat, but a study shows that you should never underestimate the power of advertising.
Television commercials figured into a study released this week in the Journal of Pediatrics involving 75 kids age 3 to 8. The children were randomly separated into two groups: One watched a cartoon plus three commercials, one of which featured McDonald’s French fries. The other group also watched cartoons and commercials, one of which was for McDonald’s apple dippers--a cut-up fresh apple with low-fat caramel sauce.
The children’s parents were also randomly assigned to either advise their kids to choose the more healthful option (the apples) or remain neutral about their choice, allowing their kids to choose whatever they wanted. The children were shown photos of the two foods and given a coupon for the food they chose.
Among the kids who saw the commercial for French fries, 71% chose the fries if their parents were neutral about their choice. When this group was encouraged to choose the apples, 55% did. Among the kids who saw the commercial for apples, 46% picked French fries when parents were neutral, and 33% chose the fries when their parents encouraged the more healthful selection.
“Children were clearly influenced by the commercials they saw; however, parents are not powerless,” said lead author Christopher Ferguson in a news release.
But parents shouldn’t acquiesce to the television, said Ferguson of Texas A&M International University in Laredo. “Parents have an advantage if they are consistent with their long-term messages about healthy eating.”
The study is timely, considering the recent efforts by health advocacy groups to get the Obama administration to support voluntary guidelines for food manufacturers and restaurants on advertising aimed at kids. This week, representatives from six groups held a joint press conference urging the president to support the work of the Interagency Working Group on Foods Marketed to Children, which was directed by Congress to also come up with recommendations for the nutritional quality of food marketed to children age 2 to 17. Panelists sited numerous ways companies market to children, including via Facebook, iPods, toys and contests.
At the event Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that while parents do bear the bulk of the responsibility for what their children eat, they’re not the only ones who have an influence. “Often the industry wags its finger at parents and says it’s up to us, but if it really is, why don’t they just market product to parents? They shape the way children think about food with very sophisticated, ubiquitous marketing.”
The study authors noted that among the children in the study, all of them had visited a fast food restaurant at least once a month and almost half went once a week. They also all watched television an average of 3.28 hours a day.
“Because television viewing in our sample was relatively frequent ... as was fast food consumption,” the authors wrote, “the potential impact on children’s healthy eating and potential for obesity probably should not be ignored.”
