I found an article which talks about a study on children and food packaging. The study found that when children are faced with 3 identical foods, all in different packaging, they are most likely to choose the food which has the most attractive packaging. This means that you could place a happy meal in a plain brown box and a bag of fruit in a box which featured their favourite cartoon characters and they would be much more likely to opt for the fruit!
The children were asked to choose between three identical yoghurt, fruit and cereal snacks - but the only thing that differed was the packaging designs. The first packaging design was plain, the second displayed additional health information, and the third packaging design displayed cartoon characters and an attractive product name.
To determine the participants' motivation to choose a particular snack, the researchers used a device that measured hand grip strength. This allowed them to discover the strength with which the children squeezed their hand in order to receive their desired muesli snack.
It was found that the participants' motivation was greatest for the snack with the cartoon character packaging design. The plain packaging and the packaging detailing health information were less favoured by the children.
Mathilde Kersting, lead researcher of the study, said: 'Attractively designed food packaging can tempt children to pick unhealthy foods.
'However, marketing effects of this type can also be used to promote healthy food products to children.'
In my previous posts, I found how some people disagree with marketing to children completely. However, finding this article has certainly changed my view and made me think about how if all healthy food was packaged in a way which attracted children to choose them, we would have a lot more healthy children with less diet-related health conditions. Maybe there should just be restrictions on unhealthy food being marketed to children?
Alternatively, what if all food was in plain packaging (like the cigarette packaging uproar not so long back) and nobody was allowed to express any use of colour, image or enticing text. This way everybody would be equal and children would choose food based on their taste rather than what is on the box. I don't think that's the way forward, however, I think that every food and brand is different and should have a right to have their own identity, just without using unrelated gimmicks to grab the attention of kids (One example of this which keeps grabbing my attention is the McVities advertisements and their use of cute, baby animals).
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