The kids have spoken: Food with cartoon characters tastes better.

This really says something about how our kids are brainwashed by the TV every day. A study has found that kids think foods taste better when there is a cartoon character on the package.

Kids Think Food Tastes Better From Cartooned Packages

Study Finds Junk-Food Marketing Changes the Tastes of Kids as Young as Age 4

For generations now, the grocery store tantrum has marked a rite of passage for parents. Somewhere in the snack aisle, a clenched-jaw parent is watching a child writhe in agony over a cardboard box with a cartoon character on it.

Today, researchers from Yale University announced the results of a small study which confirmed that, to children at least, food that's marketed with cartoons tastes better.

A Cartoon's Influence on Taste
Eighty-five percent of the children in the study opted for the cartoon-decorated graham crackers over the plain-wrapped ones when presented with a choice of snack; 55 percent of them said the cartoon-decorated crackers actually tasted better. For gummy snacks, 85 percent chose the cartoon package over the plain one for a snack and 52 percent of the children thought the snacks in a cartoon-decorated package tasted better.

But researchers were surprised to find cartoons didn't have as much of an effect on the children's taste for carrots. Only 50 percent of children thought carrots tasted better from a cartoon-decorated package.

Read more: ABC News

I guess even cartoon characters aren't even enough to make some kids eat their veggies.




[edit on 6/22/10 by FortAnthem]

I dug up the link to the study:

Influence of Licensed Characters on Children's Taste and Snack Preferences

Cartoon characters give the impression that the world is an easily alterable abstract artistry.
Since it is arbitrary it means things can be crafted for maximum fun, joy, glee, either wicked or innocent, at seemingly no cost.

I think it is also the fact that cartoons easily engage the mind.
Look at the way parents [child caregivers] coo & sing-song language & lay everything out & easily for them. This is how we encourage & train [& hopefully honestly inform them as well].
Children who aren't coddled/cultivated this way & worse are treated malignly & perhaps even worse simply ignored as valueless have a very hard time interfacing advantageously with society.

Don't fight it, co-opt it in a way that benefits as much as possible, rather than disables or degrades us.

What we really need to do is create easy abstractions [cartoons? heros?] that better cultivate some constructive engagement with the real world.
We should lead them along in the notion that science hold fabulous possibilities for them.
Math is full of unsolved mysteries, many of which would have immediate advantageous applications if we could solve them.

A sparkling, glittering future that is just a little leap out there.

You don't want to mislead children, but we must point them in the direction of real progress & advantage for themselves as well as for our species, society & evolution.

We have to share with them the gift that the future is a vast horizon of positive, joyful, down right fun possibilities.
If we give them that they may even in many cases put those silly empty mercenary cartoons & start dreaming & imagining [& reading?] for themselves.

Harry Potter was a revelation.
If you give children/young-people unlimited possibilities & imagination you can't beat them back with a stick.

Walk that stairway in the sky, ride that high-speed elevator into space.
That is your future kids.
It isn't without perils, but the measure of your mind will be in how well & commandingly you leap to it, grasp it & go beyond it.

[edit on 22-6-2010 by slank]

reply to post by FortAnthem


They just figured this out, now?

Heck, ever try to go grocery shopping with 4 small kids?

You get to the cash register, and discover many items added to the cart, and they all have, yep, cartoon characters on the package.

Mind control, starts early! What a waste of money!

There was study a few years ago that said essentailly the same thing about McDonalds food. Put it in Mikky D's wrapper and kids think it tastes better.

The study...

archpedi.ama-assn.org...

ABSTRACT


Objective To examine the effects of cumulative, real-world marketing and brand exposures on young children by testing the influence of branding from a heavily marketed source on taste preferences.

Conclusion Branding of foods and beverages influences young children's taste perceptions. The findings are consistent with recommendations to regulate marketing to young children and also suggest that branding may be a useful strategy for improving young children's eating behaviors.

The story...
www.cbc.ca...

Any food packaged by McDonald's tastes better to most preschoolers, says a study that powerfully demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children.

Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to kids if it was wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches. The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand or unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.

Read more: www.cbc.ca...

These guys had this stuff figured out a long time ago. We are just getting around to saying it publicly with proof to back it up.

pfft that's nothing new

Everyone knows that cartoon character underwear is more comfortable than the best silks in the planet

you can have my superman underroos when you pry them off my cold fat arse

I wonder how deep into synesthesia the advertising folks are.

Too deep for comfort, I'm guessing. They seem to have psychology down to a knack better than most of the "orthodox" shrinks.

personly IO think its how you raise the kids . Never bought the garbage just to pay for a photo? right not my kids lol. and they didnt care we made most every thing home made not from boxes lol
have a Boy who wants nikes? heres what you do .say son Illl pay you 5$ a hour (not for claening his room or chores but extra work. LIKE MOWING TEH YARD or raking leaves or help fix the car .
anyway at 10 3 hours later they no longer want nikes lolololol

Originally posted by xxcalbier
have a Boy who wants nikes? heres what you do .say son Illl pay you 5$ a hour (not for claening his room or chores but extra work. LIKE MOWING TEH YARD or raking leaves or help fix the car .
anyway at 10 3 hours later they no longer want nikes lolololol

Yes, this is the correct answer.

It's kind of sad that what used to be common sense has to be pointed out, but I guess common sense has become uncommon sense. Lot of that going around the last decade or three.

And don't we seek the same as adults?- we like foods that are appealing to the eye. I much prefer the fancy frosted cake to the one that's plain and yes for some reason it seems to taste better. I prefer a top with fancy buttons or lace, a cheerul color rather than a plain white one. Art is every where in one form or the other - we seek color and form, especially if it has a hint of something we are interested in. Sometimes the package is more beautiful than the gift. How drab the world would be without art.


My 2 cents!

Originally posted by xxcalbier

have a Boy who wants nikes? heres what you do .say son Illl pay you 5$ a hour (not for claening his room or chores but extra work. LIKE MOWING TEH YARD or raking leaves or help fix the car .
anyway at 10 3 hours later they no longer want nikes lolololol

I'll do ya one better, I never gave my kids allowance, because it's their job to pitch in and keep their room clean. Also, the extra work, was also expected without pay, at home. (I did buy them special things, when needed, and give them money when it was needed, but they had to ask for it)

I would give my children so much money towards a pair of Nike's, say $30.00, the rest they would have to earn by doing things like raking the neighbors lawn for pay!

reply to post by crazydaisy


Your absolutely correct. There have been many cases of taste tests done by chefs, myself included, that prove this.

Give some one two dishes from the same batch. Present one with some effort and flair and just put the other on the plate.

I haven't met one person who didn't think that the plate that was presented well tasted better.

Our eyes are the first thing that taste the food so to speak. Visually appealing food tastes better to any one that I have tried the experiment on.

This though is different, imo. People aren't actually seeing the food, they are seeing the packaging. It works on the same premise I suppose but there has to be some psychological differences involved. Especially since these studies are dealing with children not adults.

reply to post by crazydaisy


Yes, fancy things are pretty, but not always practical. Sometimes a box of cereal is more expensive, because of the art on it!

I was one who always had plenty of art supplies availabe for my children to use their own imagination, rather than have them look at it, on a bag of candy, or a packaged snack cake box.

Plain white shirts? Yep, bought quite a lot of them, and fabric paints, or tie dye materials.

I'd rather have my kids create art, than eat the crap that's in a decorated box, any day!

Let's not forget about Flint'stoned' vitamins.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/4bf3d38fbd16.jpg[/atsimg]


Not only are they sugar-endowed, they are petroleum based. Holy carcinogen..!

I sure loved those things as a kid - for years! I popped 'em like a NFL running back pops vicodin. They felt like Home.

Oops...my bad.

[edit on 22-6-2010 by facelift]

Originally posted by Blanca Rose
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

They just figured this out, now?

Heck, ever try to go grocery shopping with 4 small kids?

You get to the cash register, and discover many items added to the cart, and they all have, yep, cartoon characters on the package.

Mind control, starts early! What a waste of money!

Don't you love it when scientists conduct studies to proove what's obvious to all the rest of us.

With government grant money too a lot of the time.

Why can't they spent their time making real discoveries, like curing cancer or something. Oh, yeah, someone already did that and then Big Pharm suppressed it.

Maybe that's why they waste their time on stupid studies.

Sugar & artificial coloring make the poison taste good.

Don't bogart that koolaid Jim Jones.

Are they sure about that? I remember being young as a kid. Like when Nestle sold those chocolate bars with Disney characters on them.

Yech, banana flavored chocolate. I was inspired to eat lasagna because of Garfield when I younger. You don't have to have characters on the package to do that.

How about that?

I wonder if they'd get the same outcome with children from undeveloped countries. Or children from remote tribes like in Borneo or the Amazon.

Or how about using "unfamiliar" foods? Make a graham cracker that looks like something else and call it sample A or something else boring. If the child had no reference for the food, the ONLY thing influencing him/her would be the taste OR the stupid cartoon character, right?