Ignorance is bliss. How parents of preschool children make sense of front-of-package visuals and claims on food

Package design and nutritional profile of foods targeted at children in supermarkets in Montevideo, Uruguay

“…than on an exhaustive evaluation of the nutritional information included on the packages 43 . In the current study, all products with health and nutrition claims contained excessive amounts of at least one of several nutrients that have been associated with negative health outcomes 20 .…”

The impact of front-of-pack marketing attributes versus nutrition and health information on parents' food choices

“…Presently, in many countries, marketing to children on food packages does not fall under any form of government regulation (Abrams et al, 2015). Instead, Our findings that the picture of the cereal product bowl was most influential in affecting parents' choices, is therefore noteworthy.…”

“…use of claims) are used extensively, regardless of the product's actual nutrient profile, highlighting that similar techniques are used to promote both healthy and unhealthy products (Elliott, 2008;Mehta et al, 2012). In fact, some unhealthy children's products are more likely to contain marketing images and text implying health than healthier products (Elliott, 2008), thus making it difficult for consumers to make accurate assessments of a product's healthfulness (Abrams, Evans, & Duff, 2015;Elliott, 2008;Mehta et al, 2012).…”

“…Consequently, given that this was a study undertaken by parents and children were not present during the testing, with the potential to influence parents, consideration for the child's preferences may have been lower than in real life supermarket contexts. Such visual elements are known to signal unhealthy food to parents (Abrams et al, 2015), and in the absence of children, parents may have placed less emphasis on them. Also, whilst able to make sense of more information relative to infants and toddlers, young children aged five to twelve years are generally less fluent readers than their parents, and so are more likely to be influenced by visual FoP elements more so than text-based elements (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2001).…”

Children’s Food and Beverage Promotion on Television to Parents

“…1,5,19,20,26,27 Strong evidence supports that exposure to childdirected food advertising influences a child's food requests, 7 and childdirected television advertisements are often crafted to increase children's pestering for advertised products. 1 However, parents may perceive children's foods as low in nutrition and high in sugar based on characteristics of child-directed advertisements 11 and product packaging, 28 such as bright colors, animation, and licensed characters. In comparison with child-directed advertisements, parent-directed advertisements in this study more commonly featured themes of nutrition, health, and an active lifestyle.…”