Impact of Commercials on Food Preferences of Low-income, Minority Preschoolers

Abstract

Objective To determine if fruit and vegetable (FV) commercials have an impact on preschool children’s preferences for specific FV. Design A year of extensive formative assessment was conducted to develop two 30-second commercials; “Judy Fruity” promoted apples and bananas and “Reggie Veggie” promoted broccoli and carrots. The commercials were embedded into a 15-minute TV program. FV preferences were assessed before and after four exposures to each of the commercials. Setting/Participants One hundred eighty-three preschool children (39% African-American; 61% Hispanic-American) from four Head Start centers in Houston, Texas. Main Outcome/Analysis A general linear model was used to assess whether FV preferences were significantly higher in the treatment group than the control group, controlling for baseline FV preferences, age, race and intervention dose in the model. Results There was a significantly higher preference for broccoli and carrots (p = 0.02) in the intervention group compared to the control group after multiple exposures to the vegetable commercial. Conclusions/Implications Data suggest that commercials promoting vegetables may be an effective strategy to influence young children’s preferences for vegetables. This may not be the case with fruit preferences which are already high in this age group.

Consumer responses to agricultural produce advertising in the O'Higgins Region of Chile

“…According to our findings, television is the most reliable advertising medium, which is consistent with Moisa et al (2011). Nicklas et al (2011) and Ip et al (2007) show that parents prefer television advertising for choosing their children's food because it is a powerful source of information. However, they also believe that advertising should be regulated to increase the promotion of healthy food over junk food.…”

“…These results are consistent with Rickertsen (1998) and Rickertsen et al (1995) and indicate that advertising does not affect the demand for vegetables. Nicklas et al (2011) found that advertising is most likely an effective strategy to influence children´s preferences for vegetables, but not for fruit.…”

Architecture and Imagery: A Profile of Serious Game Developer Archimage, Inc.

“…The intervention strategy used TV-style advertisements to favorably influence fruit, juice, and vegetable preferences among preschool children. 12 Another fully computer-animated approach, this time rolemodeling positive health behaviors, was applied to ''Teen Choice: An Interactive Web-Based Program to Improve Food and Activity Choices of High School Students.'' The 2007 project gave high school students tailored self-paced interventions with tools to improve eating and physical activity behaviors.…”

Generational structuring of childhood images in television commercials

“…The idea of children as critical media users was introduced later, in connection with the research emphasis on children's agency (eg, Corsaro, 1997), where children were considered as being aware of their roles in society, including in relation to media contents (Davies and Machin, 2000). The more recent research, which connects children to the rapidly changing media landscape, is rich and detailed with a rather problem-oriented focus (Boyland et al, 2011;Nicklas, 2011), concerning for example the ways in which commercials commonly portray characters (eg, racial asymmetry; Li-Vollmer, 2002), including the portrayal of violence (Larson, 2001). This, together with television advertising, is among the most researched topics in this area (Comstock and Scharrer, 2007).…”