UnAdulterated — Children and adults' visual attention to healthy and unhealthy food

Abstract

ObjectiveVisually attending to unhealthy food creates a desire to consume the food. To resist the temptation people have to employ self-regulation strategies, such as visual avoidance. Past research has shown that self-regulatory skills develop throughout childhood and adolescence, suggesting adults' superior self-regulation skills compared to children.MethodsThis study employed a novel method to investigate self-regulatory skills. Children and adults' initial (bottom-up) and maintained (top-down) visual attention to simultaneously presented healthy and unhealthy food were examined in an eye-tracking paradigm.ResultsResults showed that both children and adults initially attended most to the unhealthy food. Subsequently, adults self-regulated their visual attention away from the unhealthy food. Despite the children's high self-reported attempts to eat healthily and importance of eating healthily, children did not self-regulate visual attention away from unhealthy food. Children remained influenced by the attention-driven desire to consume the unhealthy food whereas adults visually attended more strongly to the healthy food thereby avoiding the desire to consume the unhealthy option.ConclusionsThe findings emphasize the necessity of improving children's self-regulatory skills to support their desire to remain healthy and to protect children from the influences of the obesogenic environment.

Association between home and school food environments and dietary patterns among 9–11-year-old children in 12 countries

“…In fact, it has been shown that although both children and adults are attracted to unhealthy food, adults-unlike children-are able to shift their attention away from unhealthy food. 22 In addition, knowledge about healthy foods may guide the food choices of adults more than those of children. In any case, parents are responsible for the foods available at home, and empty-calorie foods at home may also describe parents' own preferences rather than those of their children.…”

Food Decision-Making: Effects of Weight Status and Age

“…When comparing children to adults, adults are initially strongly attracted by unhealthy foods, but they shift their attention from the unhealthy to the healthy foods, suggesting a self-regulation process of avoidance when measured in with naturalistic viewing paradigm [ 25 ]. Children, on the contrary, attend more strongly to unhealthy foods and do not shift their attention away [ 26 ]. In older adults and elderly, food cue sensitivity has not been studied.…”

Investigating the Effects of Non-Branded Foods Placed in Cartoons on Children’s Food Choices through Type of Food, Modality and Age

“…Furthermore, neuroimagery studies, such as one conducted by Meer et al (2016) [52], found that low nutritional value foods elicit more attention than high nutritional value foods, and for children, they have a higher level of activation in the areas involving reward, motivation and memory while viewing low nutritional value foods. Visual attention studies with eye-tracking cameras [53,54] showed that children pay more attention to low nutritional value foods compared to high nutritional value foods. Implicit affective evaluation studies, such as one by Woodward and Treat (2015) [55], indicated that both added fat and added sugar are associated with more positive affective evaluations.…”