The effects of television and Internet food advertising on parents and children.

OBJECTIVE: The current study examined the impact of television and Internet food advertising on Australian parents and children. DESIGN: Parents and their children aged 8 to 14 years were exposed to a television advertisement, an Internet advertisement or a control picture for four commonly advertised energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods. SETTING: Online web panel survey, Australia. SUBJECTS: Parents (n 1302) and their children aged 8 to 14 years (n 1302). RESULTS: After a single exposure to each advertisement, parent respondents in the two exposure conditions evaluated the products more favourably, had a greater desire to consume the products and thought the product could be consumed more frequently than those in the control condition. Similar trends were observed among children, although the differences were statistically significant only for the frequency of food consumption in the Internet advertisement condition and the evaluation of one product. CONCLUSIONS: The results have implications for assumptions of adults' immunity to advertising. This is of particular importance in efforts to address child obesity and the reliance on parents to mediate the effects of food advertising.

Exploring the moderating effect of children's nutritional knowledge on the relationship between product evaluations and food choice.

OBJECTIVE: Although the last decade has seen multiple attempts to increase consumers' nutritional knowledge in expectation that this will result in healthier diets, extant knowledge about the influence of nutritional knowledge on children's food choices remains scarce due to mixed empirical evidence and limited inquiry into the role of product evaluations on the consumption of less healthy foods. Furthermore, no research has examined whether nutritional knowledge can effectively moderate the relationship between product evaluations and food consumption, leaving a gap in our knowledge about potentially effective intervention strategies to curb childhood obesity. METHOD: Using survey data from children aged 7-13 years and their parents (N = 354) recruited at an annual fair visited by families in South Australia, regressions were performed to examine how product evaluations are associated with the consumption of less healthy foods and whether nutritional knowledge reduces the strength of these associations at different ages (7-8 years, 9-10 years, and 11-13 years). RESULTS: While children did not view fast foods to be fun or healthy, there was a positive association between appealing taste, perceived social acceptability and consumption of less healthy foods. Higher nutritional knowledge weakened the relationship between product evaluations and consumption in children younger than 11. Parents with higher nutritional knowledge had children who tended to consume less healthy foods less frequently. Although older children (11-13 years) possessed higher nutritional knowledge, it was not associated with their consumption; instead, taste and perception of social acceptability were the only factors associated with frequent consumption of less healthy products. CONCLUSION: Practitioners are encouraged to test intervention strategies that concentrate on both product evaluations and nutritional knowledge to provide more effective outcomes. Further research about peer norms that endorse unhealthy eating is encouraged to facilitate a more comprehensive approach to unhealthy eating.