Priming effects of television food advertising on eating behavior.

Abstract

Objective: Health advocates have focused on the prevalence of advertising for calorie-dense low-nutrient foods as a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic. This research tests the hypothesis that exposure to food advertising during TV viewing may also contribute to obesity by triggering automatic snacking of available food. Design: In Experiments 1a and 1b, elementary-school-age children watched a cartoon that contained either food advertising or advertising for other products and received a snack while watching. In Experiment 2, adults watched a TV program that included food advertising that promoted snacking and/or fun product benefits, food advertising that promoted nutrition benefits, or no food advertising. The adults then tasted and evaluated a range of healthy to unhealthy snack foods in an apparently separate experiment. Main Outcome Measures: Amount of snack foods consumed during and after advertising exposure. Results: Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising. Adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising compared to the other conditions. In both experiments, food advertising increased consumption of products not in the presented advertisements, and these effects were not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences. Conclusion: These experiments demonstrate the power of food advertising to prime automatic eating behaviors and thus influence far more than brand preference alone.

US Food Company Branded Advergames on the Internet: Children's exposure and effects on snack consumption

“…These findings build upon previous evidence that playing unhealthy food advergames increases children's preferences for advertised products (Mallinckrodt & Mizerski, 2007;Owen et al, 2010); playing nutrition-related computer games affects children's choice of healthy versus unhealthy foods and beverages (Pempek & Calvert, 2009); and television food advertising increases consumption of available snack foods (Halford, Boyland, Hughes, Oliveira, & Dovey, 2007;Halford, Gillespie, Brown, Pontin, & Dovey, 2004;Harris, Bargh, & Brownell, 2009). The present study also provides new evidence of broader health-related effects of existing food-branded advergames.…”

“…In Study 2 we examine the effects of playing advergames on children's ad libidum snack consumption utilizing an experimental method adapted from previous research on effects of television food advertising exposure (Harris, Bargh, & Brownell, 2009). We CHILDREN AND FOOD COMPANY ADVERGAMES measured grams consumed of healthy, moderately healthy, and unhealthy snack foods following a short exposure to one of three types of computer game play: (1) advergames featuring unhealthy foods (unhealthy advergames condition); (2) advergames featuring healthy foods (healthy advergames condition); and (3) nonfood computer games (control condition).…”

The effects of television and Internet food advertising on parents and children

“…Specifically in terms of food marketing, however, there is little evidence to date of the absolute and relative effectiveness of Internet advertising, and this lack of evidence constrains policy making (3,16,19,24,25) . Given the amount of time children now spend on the Internet and the greater blurring of boundaries between content and advertising in online contexts, it has been argued that Internet food advertising requires particular attention in efforts to address the negative effects of EDNP food marketing (3,19,(25)(26)(27) .…”

Socio-economic differences in exposure to television food advertisements in the UK: a cross-sectional study of advertisements broadcast in one television region

“…Less information on the effect of food advertising on the preferences and consumption of adults is available. However, recent work has found that the eating behaviour of adults is also affected by exposure to food advertisements (18) , suggesting that advertising for less healthy foods is a threat to the health of the whole population, and not just that of children. Food advertising is, therefore, thought to be part of the causal web responsible for the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in children, and adults, in high-income countries (19) .…”