Aug 6, 2007
"McFood" Better Than Food, Kids Say
Preschoolers Say Carrots Better When Served From McDonald's Bag
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(CBS/AP)
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It's not the food, it's the brand name. Marketing strongly affects 4-year-olds' food preferences, find Stanford University pediatrics researcher Thomas N. Robinson, M.D., and colleagues.
Robinson and colleagues studied 63 low-income children enrolled in Head Start centers in California. The kids ranged in age from 3 years to 5 years.
Told they were playing a food-tasting game, the kids sat at a table with a screen across the middle. A researcher reached around either side of the screen to put out two identical food samples: slices of a hamburger, french fries, chicken nuggets, milk, or baby carrots.
The only difference between the pairs of food samples was that one came in a plain wrapper, cup, or bag, and the other came in a clean, unused McDonald's wrapper, cup, or bag. The kids were asked whether they liked one of the foods best, or whether they tasted the same.
In all cases, the majority of the kids said the "best" foods were those linked to the McDonald's brand, even though the only differences between the bags were the McDonald's logos (no special advertising materials were used).
Kids who preferred "McFood" tended to live in homes with a greater number of television sets and tended to eat at McDonald's more often than kids not influenced by the McDonald's brand name.
"Children preferred the taste of carrots and milk if they thought they were from McDonald's," Robinson and colleagues conclude. "This is an opportunity for heavily marketed brands to respond to rising rates of childhood obesity by changing their product offerings."
McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker says McDonald's is doing just that.
"McDonald's is only advertising Happy Meals with white meat McNuggets, fresh apple slices, and low-fat milk, a right-sized meal of only 375 calories," Riker tells WebMD. "Additionally, our recent program with 'Shrek' was our biggest-ever promotion of fruits, vegetables, and milk, another indication of our progressive approach to responsible marketing."
Riker says McDonald's own research "confirms that we've earned [parents'] trust as a responsible marketer based on decades of delivering the safest food, the highest quality toys, and the kind of choice and variety today's families are looking for."
In December 2005, the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a CDC-funded study on food marketing to children. The study found that advertisers used highly sophisticated techniques to target children who are too young to know the difference between advertising claims and truth.
As a result, the IOM study showed, companies succeed in getting children to eat ever more high-calorie, low-nutrient, and high-profit, junk food.
The Robinson study appears in the August issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. The journal last year published a series of studies linking media messages to harmful effects on children's health, including child obesity.
Three-year-olds, one of the studies found, are three times more likely to be overweight if they spend two or more hours a day in a room with a TV on.
"Past studies have shown that the content of children's TV commercials is overwhelmingly about junk food," University of Michigan researcher Julie C. Lumeng, M.D., told WebMD last year. "And if you show kids commercials, they ask for the junk food. So it may be the TV, even at this early age, is shaping their food preferences."
By Daniel DeNoon
Reviewed by Louise Chang, M.D.
©2007 WebMD, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Add a Comment See all 11 Comments
- Survey for adults: Which watch tells time more accurate, one in a rolex box or one in a timax box? Enough said?
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- Psychological condition of children for and higher health care cost's. How low can American companies go?
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- And we needed a study to tell us this? It goes beyond food, look at the clothing industry. Why if it doesnt have (Whatever the current fasion trend is logo)then teenagers wont wear it.
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- "Eat MacShiat!" says Ronald MacDonald.
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- They appear to be using junk research to support their conclusions about junk food.
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- This is just another study that proves something the business world has known forever, advertising works.
This study also shows that only between 10% and 21% of children are capable ignoring emotional cues and making a rational choice based on the facts.
I'd be interested to see what percentage of adults are capable of making rational choices based on the facts, and ignore propaganda such as advertising.
Right now two major factions in our society are denying the influence of advertising and propaganda on them, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Politicians and Doctors.
Here is an article on the effect that the lobbying / advertising of the drug industry has on doctors.
In short, marketing works
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/health/la-he-effectiveness6aug06,1,3086291.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-health
It's really very amusing that as a group, doctors believe that the efforts of the drug industry influences the decisions of doctors as a whole, but individually they tend to believe that they themselves are somehow immune. Just as tend politicians think that all other politicians are 'bought' by lobbyists, but they can take the money and remain uninfluenced.
This is a very human delusion, and the sooner that the majority of people realize that everyone is susceptible to it, the sooner they will be able to fight the influence. - Reply to this comment
- you get what you pay for...maybe some people will change their spending habits to end their corporate servitude...a revolution even
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- The only valuable information I see coming from this research is that it proves that children between the ages of 3 and 5 years old prefer the taste of food that comes out of a colorful bag rather than a plain white bag!
I wonder what the results would have been if the other bag had some color similar to the McDonald's bag, but contained no recognizable logo or words. Maybe a similar yellow shaded diamond shape instead of arches, and about the same number of letters, but just random letters not any actual words?
Heck, it's common sense and widely known already that attractive packaging will help sell more of a product than plain packaging. So, this research tells us what we already know, but now we know it also applies to 3 to 5 year olds. This in NO WAY shows that three year olds recognize the McDonalds logo, so they choose that product.
How about instead of a plain white bag they were to use a bright colorful bag with rainbows and original cartoon characters that the child has never seen before? I'd bet $1000 that the child would say that the burger that came out of the rainbow bag tasted better than the rather bland McDonalds bag with arches and "McDonald's" written on it!
You would think that people involved in research at this level would know that their results were greatly flawed. Actually, you would think that people involved with research at this level would have considered using other bags besides a plain white one before they even started testing the kids. - Reply to this comment
- pretty scary story- this country is so far off the mark-
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- Dang. Pavlov would be proud. Or perhaps insulted. Ray Kroc's estate is undoubtedly overjoyed.
Meanwhile, we call our kids stupid, eliminate school funding, offshore jobs because workers aren't "qualified", et cetera. Can we blame "Mickey D" for all that too?
And maybe parents ought to teach children not to bow down to a big stupid yellow and red clown of death too. If brand association can enslave them at age 4, maybe our society deserves to implode. After all, if McD goes under, all those kids just won't be able to eat their carrots and drink their milk when they grow up! Oh, the children, they will staaaaaaaarve to death!
I will say this - keep an eye on the minority that saw right through the McDifference. Assuming intellect is valued in our country, of course... - Reply to this comment
