The impact of exposure to cartoons promoting healthy eating on children's food preferences and choices

Objective: This study explored whether a cartoon show with healthy eating messages positively affected children's food choices and food preferences.Design: Experimental between-subjects design.Setting: Four elementary schools in Portugal were investigated.Participants: Children (aged 4-8 years; n = 142) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups: a comparison group (n = 73) was exposed to cartoons with no reference to food and an intervention group (n = 69) was exposed to cartoons with healthy eating messages. After viewing, each child was given the opportunity to eat ad libitum for 10 minutes from a small selection of snack foods.Main Outcome Measure: Number of healthy and unhealthy food items chosen. Food preferences were measured using an adapted version of the Leeds Food Preference Checklist.Analysis: Generalized linear models were used to test for differences between groups. Results were considered significant at P <= .05.Results: Children in the experimental group chose significantly more healthy food items than did those in the comparison group (B = -.600; SE = .19; P < .05).Conclusions and Implications: Future studies may address the effect of prolonged exposure to healthy eating cartoons. Cartoons can be used to promote healthy food choices and can be a part of health promotion campaigns.
This research was partially supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia through a European Union COMPETE program grant to Eva Conceicao (IF/01219/2014), and a postdoctoral scholarship (SFRH/BPD/94490/2013) to Ana Rita Vaz, cofinanced by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (UID/PSI/01662/2013) and the project PTDC/MHC-PCL/4974/2012. This research was supported, in part, by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education through national funds and cofinanced by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). The authors would like to thank Nutri Ventures for adapting the episodes for the research purposes. They would also like to thank Ana Rito for her suggestions regarding the study protocol.