1/15/13
Growing up in a media environment that has focused considerable attention on the marketing of food and beverages to kids and on high rates of childhood obesity, today’s tweens have a heightened awareness of food and eating habits, according to The Marketing Store. Two in three rate themselves “excellent” or “pretty good” in terms of healthy eating. (See related stories on pg 5.)
Children ages 8-11 aren’t interested in perfect eating habits. They feel that special situations, such as birthday and school parties, are more enjoyable with so-called “bad” foods such as pizza, chips, and candy. Eight in 10 kids ages 8-11 (80%) say that over the past year their parents have changed the types of food they buy and prepare to make healthier choices for their families.
Moms are closely aligned with their children on their eating habits. Two in three feel their children eat mostly healthy foods, and moms recognize that junk food is okay on certain occasions.
Nonetheless, moms are aiming for improvement. More than six in 10 moms (63%) with kids ages 5-7 have made changes that affect their children’s eating habits in the past year. These changes mostly include ensuring that their kids eat more fruits and vegetables, a greater variety of foods, and more organic products.
Moms view organic products as ways to protect their children – rather than themselves – from pesticides. Strawberries are a particular concern, as is milk.
Rather than setting rules regarding foods, moms say they focus on smaller, incremental goals in order to improve their children’s eating habits.
Children’s Healthy Food Knowledge
More than nine in 10 tweens have at least a general awareness about health and nutrition. Nearly three in four tweens (73%) have heard of the Food Pyramid, and 41% have heard of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new eating guideline, My Plate. However, children ages 5-7 often have trouble understanding many concepts used by the government to promote healthy eating, including portion size, fractions, and pie charts. They are more likely to understand healthy eating concepts when illustrated by plain images of food.
Most children recognize that blueberries, broccoli, carrots, bananas, and water are healthy. They also recognize that candy, soda, and ice cream are unhealthy. However, they are uncertain about the healthfulness of items such as apple juice, cereal, chicken nuggets, pizza, pretzels, sports drinks, waffles, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Age eight represents a key transition point; at this age, children start reading nutrition information labels. Girls are more likely than boys to read these labels. Kids who read labels primarily do so out of boredom (e.g. idly reading the back of the cereal box at breakfast). It’s rare that tweens look at nutritional labels while shopping. When children do read labels, they look at calorie count, fat content, sugar content, serving size, and carbohydrate content.
Some food marketing claims are more effective than others among tweens. Products should focus on what the product has, rather than what has been taken away. “Made with real fruit” resonates most strongly with tweens, followed by “more vitamins and minerals” and “all natural.” Ineffective messages include “made with organic ingredients,” “all natural ingredients,” and “less of the bad stuff.”
Tweens often have a hard time understanding marketing claims that refer to sugar content, because they are unsure how much sugar is considered appropriate. Similarly, they consider 100 calories to be a lot, so 100-calorie portion packages (aimed at dieters) may signal to them that the product is unhealthy.
Source: The Marketing Store, Heather Gately, 701 E. 22nd St., Lombard, IL 60148; 630-693-1607; hello.globall@themarketingstore.com; www.globalkidsstudy.com.
© 2013 Business Valuation Resources, LLC (BVR). May not be reproduced without written consent of publisher.