Poster #31 - Food Brand Logos and Healthy Eating Decisions in Children

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Healthy eating is key to prevent and reduce childhood obesity. To make healthy choices, children need to resolve response conflicts between immediate gratification and long-term health benefits by resisting a predisposed preference to unhealthy foods (Epstein et al., 2010). Food marketing influences healthy eating by shaping extrinsic cues (Coon & Tucker, 2002). Heightened sensitivity to extrinsic cues hinders healthy eating by outweighing immediate gratification of eating advertised unhealthy foods. Children prefer to eat advertised foods, and food brands influence taste perception (Robinson et al., 2007). Brand logos elicited neural responses similar to food images (Bruce et al., 2013), and recruited the reward and cognitive control systems (Murawski et al., 2012). To better understand the role of extrinsic cues in children’s healthy eating, the current study investigated children’s eating decisions based on food brand logos. Given that resisting unhealthy foods elicited large response conflicts and required greater cognitive efforts in food choices (Ha et al., 2016), it was hypothesized that resisting unhealthy logos (1) would elicit larger response conflicts during decision-making processes, and (2) would require greater cognitive efforts to regulate the temptation to eat unhealthy food products.

31 children aged 8-13 years (M = 10.5, 15 girls) completed the mouse-tracking logo choice task (Figure 1). Children made decisions between yes (want to eat) and no (do not want to eat) responses on 30 healthy and 30 unhealthy food logos using a computer mouse. Mouse movement trajectories were recorded in x, y coordinates during decision-making processes. A deviation from the idealized trajectory (a straight line from the bottom-center to a selected response) demonstrates spatial attraction to an unselected response. The area under the curve (AUC: total amount of curvature), and the maximum deviation (MD: a largest deviation point) indicate response conflicts and cognitive efforts for regulating the temptation to choose an unselected response.

A repeated-measure ANOVA with logo (unhealthy, healthy) and choice (no, yes) as within-subject factors for the AUC showed that a main effect of logo [F(1, 30) = 6.07, p = .02, partial = .17], and an interaction effect were significant [F(1, 30) = 9.01, p = .005, partial = .23]. The AUC was greater for the unhealthy-no than the unhealthy-yes response [t(30) = 3.42, p = .002] (Figure 2). A similar repeated-measure ANOVA for the MD showed that a main effect of logo [F(1, 30) = 8.16, p = .008, partial = .21], and an interaction effect were significant [F(1, 30) = 7.99, p = .008, partial = .21]. The MD was greater for the unhealthy-no than the unhealthy-yes response [t(30) = 3.65, p = .001]. These findings suggested that rejecting unhealthy logos elicited larger conflicts in eating decisions, and required greater cognitive efforts to regulate the temptation to eat unhealthy foods. Findings implied that logos primed actual food items and formed strong appetitive motivation in children. To promote children’s healthy eating, it will be important to establish better media policy regulating food marketing, and to provide opportunities to learn healthy eating decisions strategies.

Authors

• Oh-Ryeong Ha, University of Missouri-Kansas City
  Presenting Author

• Seung-Lark Lim, University of Missouri-Kansas City
  Non-Presenting Author

• Haley Killian, University of Missouri-Kansas City
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda S Bruce, University of Kansas Medical Center & Children’s Mercy Hospital
  Non-Presenting Author