Kids say Cheerio to healthy cereals in favour of cartoons

Snap, crackle and popular: kids were swayed by images of cartoon characters on cereal boxes

By John Golden.

It may come as no surprise — at least to anyone who has ever brought a child to a supermarket — that children are attracted to popular cartoon characters on cereal boxes,  but would Frosties be as ‘grrrrreat’ without Tony on the box?

A new study conducted by University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication found that having an animated character on the box will override a child’s reservations about unhealthy foods.

The researchers gave 80 children (ages four to six) cereal from a box labelled either ‘Healthy Bits’ or ‘Sugar Bits’. Half the boxes were decorated with cartoon penguins from the animated movie Happy Feet; the other half were not.

The children were asked to score the cereals on a scale between 1 and 5 ‘smilies’. The ‘Healthy Bits’ cereal scored well, penguins or not, averaging 4.5 smiles. The ‘Sugar Bits’ cereal, to the researchers’ surprise, scored considerably lower, averaging under 3.0.

Reading those three results, one might be forgiven thinking that children are finally starting to eat healthily, or at least be influenced by health-based advertising. Alas, those hopes would be soon quashed by seeing the final result, which showed that ‘Sugar Bits’ adorned with pictures of the cute, monogamous creatures scored just as high as the healthy options.

Crunch time: The absence of a cartoon character from the other box used in the trial

Matt Lapierre, one of the authors of the study that appeared in the Archives of Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine, gave his reasons on why children scored the latter so high. “Appealing characters manipulate young children’s subjective judgments; the resulting heightened preference for food products featuring these characters is likely to contribute to unhealthy eating habits.”

Why the children scored the ‘Sugar Bits’ without the animation so low is harder to explain. “One of the explanations we’ve been working with is that kids grow up with this negative association with sugar,” said Lapierre. He pointed out that recently there has been a trend to use more healthy-sounding words in branding. “What used to be ‘Sugar Smacks’ is now ‘Honey Smacks’. What used to be ‘Sugar Crisp’ is now ‘Golden Crisp’.”

The report concluded: “Messages encouraging healthy eating may resonate with young children, but the presence of licensed characters on packaging potentially overrides children’s assessments of nutritional merit.”

Restrictions in terms of advertising aimed at children have become more stringent in recent times; the 2009 Broadcasting Act put a ban on junk-food advertising during children’s viewing times.  So is it time to take Shrek, Woody and Dora off the cereal boxes?

With 300,000 overweight or obese children in Ireland, it might be a good idea. However, remember parents, you have the power to say ‘no’.

office@imt.ie