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24 January 2013

Obese Children Turned on by Fast Food Logos

Keywords: advertising, brands, fast food, food, health, North America, eating behavior, experiment, teens,

Research has shown that children prefer food and products with familiar brand logos. However, some do more than others, a study in the Journal of Pediatrics shows. The researchers used MRI scans to find out how heavy versus healthy-weight children respond to fast food brand logos. Surprisingly, heavy-weight kids react differently to food brands than normal-weight kids.

Take aways

  • When heavy-weight kids see a food brand logo, the pleasure centers of their brain lighten up, which is a similar reaction as when children get a candy or a present.
  • When heavy-weight kids see a a fast food logo, the self-control centers of the brain are less active than for healthy-weight children.
  • Obese children are more vulnerable to food advertising than healthy weight children, because the self-control regions in their brains are less developed, and are even undermined when seeing food brands.
  • To harm obese children for unhealthy food advertising, future interventions should focus on increasin these kids' self-control. 

Study information

  • The question?

    How are logos being processed in the brain of obese versus healthy weight children?

  • Who?

    20 children between the age of 10 and 14 years old (mean age 11,8 years old). 10 children were obese, 10 children were normal weight

  • Where?

    Kansas, United States

  • How?

    First, the children filled out a questionnaire about their demographics and their self-reported self control. Afterwards, researchers showed the children 60 food logos and 60 non-food logos, all of popular brands and/or companies. Meanwhile, the researchers scanned the brains and measured the brain activity of children, by making use of MRI, to see how they responded to the different logos.

Facts and findings

  • When a logo for a fast-food brand was shown to the obese children, there was an increased activity in most parts of their brains.
  • Specifically, the pleasure centers of their brain were lighting up, which is a similar reaction as when children get a candy or a present.
  • When shown a fast food logo, obese children had less brain activation in the brain parts associated with self-control, than healthy weight children had. 
  • Therefore, it’s likely that obese children are more vulnerable to the effects of food advertising than healthy weight children are. 
  • Fun fact: The results of this study were almost the same to the results of earlier studies, where researchers didn’t use logos, but used images of food.