EVEN pre-schoolers are slaves to branded foods, it seems. Dina Borzekowski at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, and her colleagues asked 63 children, aged 3 to 5, to sample two meals, each consisting of a chicken nugget, a quarter of a hamburger, French fries, two baby carrots and a small cup of milk. Although both meals came from McDonald鈥檚, only one of them was in its original packaging.
In most cases children said they tasted a difference between the meals, and preferred the branded foods. For example, 76 per cent favoured the fries presented in the branded packaging, compared with 13 per cent who preferred the unbranded fries ().
鈥淚t鈥檚 no surprise that branding works,鈥� says Borzekowski. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 interesting is how strongly it affects 3 to 5-year-olds.鈥� Children in the study were also twice as likely to prefer branded carrots, suggesting that clever marketing could convince youngsters to make healthier choices.
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鈥淐hildren in the study were twice as likely to prefer branded carrots鈥�
