Maybe it’s time to stop blaming our kids’ lousy eating habits on SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer. It turns out that good-old biology may be at fault.
Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder recently set out to study the impact cartoon-branded packaging has on kids' consumption choices.
When presented with like-food options, say cookies, kids gravitated toward packaging with their favorite character. But when given the option of Scooby snacks versus carrots, well, taste buds won out, according to the paper, which appears in the April issue of the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
“While previous studies show a major spike in characters on food packages, our new research finds that, while those characters may influence brand choice, they don’t have a strong effect on choice of healthy over indulgent foods,” the study’s lead author Bridget Leonard said. Leonard was a Ph.D. candidate at UC Boulder during the research and is now an assistant professor of marketing at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. “More research needs to be done on how to get children to make those healthy choices.”
Previous studies have looked at the significant power of persuasion My Little Pony can have on a toddler. In 2015, for instance, researchers in Italy found that putting a cartoon sticker on a piece of fruit could dramatically alter a kid’s perception of how delicious that kiwi could be even before taking a bite.
“Children were so enchanted by the presence of the characters that they tended to link the aesthetic appearance with the good taste of those selected foods, without trying them; the relationship with characters is strong enough to influence their preferences,” the researchers noted.
