Munchy Monster: Using Video Gaming to Objectively Evaluate Front of Pack Labeling Strategies for School-aged Children

Background It has been estimated that only two percent of children eat a diet that is consistent with the Food Guide pyramid, consuming diets that are too high in fat, saturated fat and sodium, and too low in fiber. Furthering concerns associated with these statistics is the fact that childhood is a determinant phase in the establishment of eating habits, and that developing healthy eating practices as a child has long-term health benefits.

That said, children are an attractive segment for food marketers. Children are not only represent a primary market with growing access to discretionary income, children also have significant power to influence decisions and are a promising future market. As such, kids represent an attractive target for marketers, and research suggests vulnerability to the messages which target them.

It has been suggested that directing messages to children "increases children's preferences for the foods advertised and increases their requests to parents for those foods." Recognizing this, packaging plays an important role in the marketing mix. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has estimated that 12% of all youth marketing expenditures are spent on packaging and in-store in store display materials. This is because of packaging's ability to influence purchase within retail spaces, at the point where purchasing decisions are made; something researchers have referred to as the "nag factor."

Clearly, the idea of presenting information directed at children using packaging for the purpose of motivating sales is utilized; however, the idea of presenting regulated information (e.g. nutritional information) in a format that might be readily understood by this vulnerable audience has not been widely explored. A major goal of nutritional labeling on food packages is to help consumers make appropriate choices. However, the current approach to nutritional labeling is targeted at adults, rather than children.

Although children as young as age four are capable of classifying familiar foods (e.g. ice cream vs. broccoli) as healthy or unhealthy, the investigators are the first to examine whether children can use visual cues from Front of Pack (FOP) labels to compare and evaluate food products from the same category (cereal). FOP labels appear on the front of packages and provide truncated information about nutrients that tend to be associated with disease (e.g. fats, trans fats, sugar and sodium).