Promoting Resilience to Food Commercials Decreases Susceptibility to Unhealthy Food Decision-Making

Children are vulnerable to adverse effects of food advertising. Food commercials are known to increase hedonic, taste-oriented, and unhealthy food decisions. The current study examined how promoting resilience to food commercials impacted susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making in children. To promote resilience to food commercials, we utilized the food advertising literacy intervention intended to enhance cognitive skepticism and critical thinking, and decrease positive attitudes toward commercials. Thirty-six children aged 8–12 years were randomly assigned to the food advertising literacy intervention or the control condition. Eighteen children received four brief intervention sessions via video over 1 week period. In each session, children watched six food commercials with interspersed embedded intervention narratives. While watching food commercials and narratives, children were encouraged to speak their thoughts out loud spontaneously (“think-aloud”), which provided children's attitudes toward commercials. Eighteen children in the control condition had four control sessions over 1 week, and watched the same food commercials without intervention narratives while thinking aloud. The first and last sessions were held in the laboratory, and the second and third sessions were held at the children's homes. Susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making was indicated by the decision weights of taste attributes, taste perception, food choices, ad libitum snacking, and cognitive and affective attitudes toward food commercials. As hypothesized, the intervention successfully decreased susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making evidenced by reduced decision weights of the taste in food decisions, decreased tasty perception of unhealthy foods, and increased cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward food commercials. In addition, as children's opinions assimilated to intervention narratives, their cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward commercials increased. The aforementioned results were not shown in the control condition. However, this brief intervention was not enough to change actual food choices or food consumption. Results of this study suggest that promoting resilience to food commercials by enhancing cognitive skepticism and critical thinking effectively reduced children's susceptibility to unhealthy food-decision making.

IMPACT OF TV ADVERTISEMENTS AND TV VIEWING ON FOOD CHOICES AND FOOD HABITS IN 6-10 YEAR OLD CHILDREN

TV advertisements and TV viewing have been associated with children’s food choices and food preferences and has been a topic of interest for many years. With every passing year, the trends in TV advertising are constantly changing; better strategies are adopted in order to promote a particular product. The increased number of unhealthy food commercials aired on children’s favourite channels could have an impact on their food choices and food habits. This study was done with an aim of finding the influence of TV advertisements and TV viewing on the purchase requests, food choices, and food habits of 6-10 year old children. A cross over study was conducted by dividing the children into control and experimental groups, questionnaires which were distributed were to be filled by both the children and their mothers’ assessing TV viewing, food consumed while TV viewing and attitude towards advertised foods. Interventions were done to check brand preference and retention capacity of advertisements viewed, and to assess the healthfulness of food choices opted while TV viewing on a subpopulation (n=20). Results show that there were no significant values between the control and experimental groups. In the context of brand preference and retention capacity of advertisements; significant values were obtained for mango beverage (p=0.02) and potato chips (p=0.03) commercials. The healthfulness of food choices while TV viewing was poor as most of the children opted for unhealthy snacks and the consumption of healthy snacks like fruits were low.

Brain responses to watching food commercials compared with nonfood commercials: a meta-analysis on neuroimaging studies

Objective: This study aimed to identify and meta-analyse the neuroimaging data and hence synthesise a brain map showing the neural correlates of watching food commercials. Design: Published studies were retrieved and included into the analysis if they evaluated brain responses to food commercials with functional MRI and reported results based on whole-brain analysis in standard brain coordinates. Setting: No additional restriction was placed on the search, such as the publication year and age of participants. Participants: Seven papers that composed of a total of 442 participants fulfilled the inclusion criteria. All of them recruited children or adolescents. Results: Food commercials caused larger brain responses than nonfood counterparts in the cuneus on both hemispheres, which played a role in dietary self-control and modulation of food craving. Other brain regions involved in food commercials processing included the left culmen, left middle occipital gyrus and the right superior parietal lobule, which could be related to reward, emotional responses and habit formation. Conclusion: These neural correlates may help explain the food choice and eating behaviours of children and adolescents that might be relevant to the development of obesity.

Cultural Language and Commercials: Cross-cultural Content Analysis of Commercials between Almarai` and Real California Cheese

Advertisements direct the consumers to focus on the products; it changes their mind and persuades them to buy the products which can be done by using certain lexical choices or gestures. Therefore, the researchers will compare two cultures; the Arabs culture especially the Gulf area and the Western culture especially the American culture by using five commercials of Almarai`s company that represents the Arab part with another five American commercials from Real California Cheese company “The Happy cow from California” that represents the American culture. In addition, the researchers will look at commercials which exist in the two parts of the world as “Snickers” and "Philadelphia cheese" where the reader can notice some similarities and differences between the American culture and the Arab culture. The commercials in this paper are specified in food commercials. Finally, the researchers will focus on how the language is used in the commercials and how some of the standard of textuality such as cohesion, coherent and informativity are used.