Effects of a food advertising literacy intervention on Taiwanese children’s food purchasing behaviors

Abstract

Unhealthy food advertising is an important contributor to childhood obesity. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the impact of a food advertising literacy program that incorporated components of health-promoting media literacy education on fifth-grade children. Participants were 140 fifth-graders (10 and 11 years old) from one school who were randomly divided into three groups. Experimental Group A received a food advertising literacy program, experimental Group B received a comparable knowledge-based nutrition education program and the control group did not receive any nutrition education. Repeated measures analysis of variance and multivariate analysis of covariance were used to test mean changes between pretest, posttest and follow-up on participants' nutritional knowledge, food advertising literacy and food purchasing behavior. Results showed that, as compared with Group B and the control groups, Group A showed higher nutritional knowledge, food advertising literacy and food purchasing behavior at post-intervention, but had no significant improvements in nutritional knowledge and food purchasing behavior at the 1-month follow-up. Although some improvements were observed, future studies should consider a long-term, settings-based approach that is closely connected with children's daily lives, as this might be helpful to solidify children's skills in recognizing, evaluating and understanding unhealthy food advertising.

Food and Nutrition Literacy (FNLIT) is Associated to Healthy Eating Behaviors in Children

“…In contrast, the easy access to junk foods in schools (43,47,48) affects taste preferences of the children (49). Improving food and nutrition skills such as food advertising literacy, food purchasing behaviors and food label literacy can help children respond critically to such food media and make better food choices (50).…”

Health-promoting skills for children: Evaluating the influence of a media literacy and food marketing intervention

“…Indeed, health-related topics have long been part of the tradition of media literacy intervention work, including the role of mediated images in influencing youth perceptions around cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and body image (Banerjee and Kubey, 2013). Specifically, nutrition-promoting media literacy interventions have incorporated educational elements centred on media content, such as the use of food advertisements targeting children to explore such concepts as truthfulness or the role of spokespersons (Hindin et al, 2004;Lane et al, 2018;Liao et al, 2016) and the creation of fictional marketing campaigns promoting the increased consumption of fruits and vegetables (Evans et al, 2006;Grassi et al, 2016).…”

“…However, limited research exists on media literacy intervention efficacy where nutrition promotion is concerned (Bergsma and Carney, 2008). Existing studies evaluating nutrition-promoting media literacy for children focus on behavioural outcomes related to consumption and food purchasing (Evans et al, 2006;Grassi et al, 2016;Lane et al, 2018;Liao et al, 2016); little attention has been paid to measuring the acquisition of different types of critical knowledge needed to navigate food marketing appeals. Such skills are necessary to navigate food packaging itself, in order to assess the healthfulness of processed foods -a topic that has not been examined in existing health education scholarship.…”

Development and Validation of Nutrition Literacy Scale for Middle School Students in Chongqing, China: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Nutrition literacy is an emerging term de ned as 'the degree to which people have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic nutrition information' 10 . Children with high levels of nutrition literacy could develop healthy dietary habits and food purchasing behaviour 11 , whereas low nutrition literacy has been shown to be associated with unhealthy diets 8,12,13 .…”