Does Food Advertising Affect Eating Habits?

While health advocates have focused on the role of advertising for calorie-dense low-nutrient foods as a major contributor to the obesity epidemic, research remains limited.  An experimental study published in the July 2009 issue of Health Psychology examines the hypothesis that exposure to food advertising during TV viewing may also contribute to obesity by triggering automatic snacking of available food. In the first experiment, elementary-school-age children watched a cartoon that contained either food advertising or advertising for other products and received a snack while watching. In a second experiment, adults watched a TV program that included food advertising that promoted snacking and/or fun product benefits, food advertising that promoted nutrition benefits, or no food advertising. The adults then tasted and evaluated a range of healthy to unhealthy snack foods in an apparently separate experiment.  The amount of snack foods consumed during and after advertising exposure was carefully measured. Results showed that children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising. Adults however, consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising compared to the other conditions. In both experiments, food advertising increased consumption of products not in the presented advertisements, and these effects were not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences. The researchers concluded that the experiments demonstrate the power of food advertising to trigger automatic eating behaviors and can influence far more than brand preference alone

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