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

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oh-Ryeong Ha ◽  
Haley J. Killian ◽  
Ann M. Davis ◽  
Seung-Lark Lim ◽  
Jared M. Bruce ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Literacy Intervention ◽  
Food Advertising ◽  
Unhealthy Food ◽  
Food Decisions ◽  
Decision Weights ◽  
Advertising Literacy ◽  
Food Commercials

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.

When virtue is not an option: Decision making in unhealthy food choices

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-216
Author(s):  
Lauren Trabold Apadula ◽  
Chrissy M Martins
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Consumer Preference ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Selection Strategy ◽  
Unhealthy Food ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Relative Preference ◽  
Diet Versus ◽  
Health Objectives

Background: Health conscious consumers often make choices from constrained sets of food options, such as a restaurant menu, in which healthy options may not be present. Aim: The aim of this research was to examine how different decision strategies, such as selection versus rejection, influence the food option chosen when a choice set is restricted to unhealthy options. The mediating role of anticipated guilt was also explored. Methods: An experiment was conducted using a hypothetical choice scenario, in which participants were randomly assigned to a decision making strategy (select versus reject), health objective (diet versus indulge), and relative preference for the options (choice between two preferred options versus one preferred and one non-preferred option) was manipulated. Results: When using a selection strategy, consumers are more likely to choose their most preferred option, regardless of their health objectives, but when using a rejection strategy, health conscious consumers are more likely to avoid their most preferred option and consume a lesser liked alternative. Further, this effect is driven by reduced feelings of guilt. Important boundary conditions include consumer preference for the food options, as health conscious consumers will not reject their favorite option if they do not like the alternative. Conclusions: Decision making strategy influences health conscious consumers’ choices between unhealthy food options.

scholarly journals Effects of a food advertising literacy intervention on Taiwanese children’s food purchasing behaviors

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Ling Liao ◽  
I.-Ju Lai ◽  
Li-Chun Chang ◽  
Chia-Kuei Lee
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Intervention ◽  
Food Advertising ◽  
Food Purchasing ◽  
Advertising Literacy

scholarly journals Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0259521
Author(s):  
Gitta van den Enden ◽  
Kelly Geyskens
Keyword(s):  
Choice Experiment ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Attraction Effect ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Unhealthy Food ◽  
Healthy Choice ◽  
Control Situation ◽  
Food Decisions ◽  
Choice Set

Every day, people make many food decisions without thinking, repeatedly falling for the unhealthy option instead of the healthy option. While making these mindless decisions, people often rely on heuristics. In this paper, we demonstrate that these heuristics can be exploited to nudge consumers towards healthy alternatives. Specifically, we explore how the attraction effect (i.e., adding a decoy to a choice set) can nudge people to choose a healthy snack. The results of our choice experiment indicate that adding a decoy (i.e., a less attractive food alternative) to a self-control situation (i.e., choosing between a healthy and an unhealthy food alternative) can help people maintain self-control and choose the healthy option. This mixed choice set thus nudges people towards the healthy option. Moreover, our results show differential effects of the attraction effect depending on the (un)healthiness of the products in the choice set. Specifically, the attraction effect is prominent when the choice set consists of unhealthy products only (i.e., the unhealthy choice set), but not in the choice set that consists of only healthy products (i.e., healthy choice set). Importantly, our results indicate when the attraction effect can exploit consumers’ heuristics to help them make better, healthier food choices.

scholarly journals Shared Dynamics of Food Decision-Making in Mother-Child Dyads

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oh-Ryeong Ha ◽  
Amanda S. Bruce ◽  
Haley J. Killian ◽  
Ann M. Davis ◽  
Seung-Lark Lim
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Weight Status ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Lower Percentage ◽  
Maternal Body Mass Index ◽  
Healthy Weight ◽  
Positive Correlation ◽  
Food Decisions ◽  
Decision Weights ◽  
Risk Parameters

This study explored risk parameters of obesity in food decision-making in mother-child dyads. We tested 45 children between 8–12 years and their biological mothers to measure the decision weights of food health attributes, the decision weights of food taste attributes, self-regulated food decisions, and self-reported self-control scores. Maternal body mass index (BMI), and children's BMI-percentiles-for-age were also measured. We found a positive correlation between children's and their mothers' decision weights of taste attributes in food decision-making. We also found a positive correlation between children's BMI %iles and their mothers' BMIs. Children with overweight/obesity demonstrated lower correlations between health and taste ratings and a lower percentage of self-regulated food decisions (i.e., resisting to eat tasty but unhealthy foods or choosing to eat not-tasty but healthy foods) than children with healthy weight. Our findings suggested that the decision weights of taste attributes and weight status shared similar patterns in mother-child dyads. Also, the findings suggested that establishing dynamics of unhealthy food-decision making may increase the risk of childhood obesity. Helping children to develop the dynamics of healthy food-decision making by increasing the importance of health while decreasing the importance of taste may promote resilience to susceptibility to unhealthy eating and weight gain.

How Should We Educate Students Whose Cultures Frown upon Rational Disputation?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Rational Argumentation

`How should public education in democratic states deal with the cultural diversity brought about by contemporary globalization? My suggestion is that key to democratic public education is the obligation to foster in students the skills and abilities, and attitudes and dispositions, needed to participate fully in democratic decision-making. Of central importance are the abilities and dispositions required for critical thinking and rational argumentation: evaluating arguments of others, constructing arguments of one’s own that might rationally persuade one’s fellow citizens, etc. Without these abilities and dispositions, full participation in democratic decision-making is impossible. But fostering them is problematic when students are members of cultures in which argumentation is frowned upon. In this paper I address this tension, and argue that while respecting cultural differences is of the first importance, in democracies it cannot override the requirements of democracy itself. When these two clash, the requirements of democratic participation must take precedence.

scholarly journals See the Cake and Have it Too? Investigating the Effect of Watching a Cooking Show on Unhealthy Food Choices

2021 ◽  
pp. 113409
Author(s):  
Monique C. Alblas ◽  
Saar Mollen ◽  
Marieke L. Fransen ◽  
Bas van den Putte
Keyword(s):  
Food Choices ◽  
Unhealthy Food

scholarly journals Exposure of Children to Unhealthy Food and Beverage Advertisements in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 3856
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Yamoah ◽  
Jeroen De Man ◽  
Sunday O. Onagbiye ◽  
Zandile J. Mchiza
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Healthy Food ◽  
Food Advertising ◽  
Regulation System ◽  
Unhealthy Food ◽  
The South ◽  
Food And Beverages ◽  
Persuasive Strategies ◽  
Food And Beverage ◽  
Marketing To Children

Television (TV) is a powerful medium for marketing food and beverages. Food and beverage marketers tend to use this medium to target children with the hope that children will in turn influence their families’ food choices. No study has assessed the compliance of TV marketers with the South African Marketing to Children pledge since the enactment of the 2014 food advertising recommendations by the South African Department of Health and the Advertising Standards Authority. This study investigated the extent and nature of advertising of unhealthy versus healthy food and beverages to children in South African TV broadcasting channels. The date, time, type, frequency and target audience of food advertisements (ads) on four free-to-air South African TV channels were recorded and captured using a structured assessment guide. The presence of persuasive marketing techniques was also assessed. Unhealthy food and beverage advertising was recorded at a significantly higher rate compared with healthy food and beverages during the time frame when children were likely to be watching TV. Brand benefit claims, health claims and power strategies (e.g., advertising using cartoon characters and celebrated individuals) were used as persuasive strategies. These persuasive strategies were used more in unhealthy versus healthy food ads. The findings are in breach of the South African Marketing to Children pledge and suggest a failure of the industry self-regulation system. We recommend the introduction of monitored and enforced statutory regulations to ensure healthy TV food advertising space.

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