Food advertising and children: An educational path to the discovery of Persuasion

Many studies demonstrate the positive relation between child-targeted food marketing and children’s unhealthy eating habits leading to overweight or obesity (IOM, 2006). In Italy, food advertising is broadcast in an average 90 commercials per day and the commercials addressed to children focus mainly on the concepts of “taste” and “fun” suggesting the idea that food’s meaning is related only to pleasure and entertainment and thus removing any connection with health and the commitment it requires (Russo, 2012). On the base of this concern, the current within-subject research investigates on how children with low/high persuasion awareness towards advertising differ in their understanding and tries to analyse whether children could raise their awareness of food advertising so as to decode its objectives and messages and activate cognitive defences in order to break children free from its influence. The focus is primarily on age and on social factors. The sample of n1=66 second-grade students with a control group of nc=51 second grades was led through a pre-test (questionnaires and focus group), treatment (lessons about advertising and its tecniques) and post-test and allowed to formulate 4 hypotheses about children’s liking of advertising, their awareness about advertising aims, their acceptance of advertising attempts to make reality more attractive, and also children’s criteria to choose a food product in a supermarket. Our results showed that children could be educated to advertising and learn its persuasion aims in a gradual way and showed difficulty in perceiving any strategical connection food /fun.