A Deakin University study has used eye-tracking glasses to show how much time children spend looking at unhealthy food and drinks placed in prominent displays at supermarket entrances, checkouts and end-of-aisles.
The research found prominent food and drink displays “effectively captured and held children’s attention”, especially the entrance and checkout displays which accounted for nearly three-quarters of the children’s total attention to displays.
Christine Dove, a Public Health Nutritionist and PhD candidate in the Deakin Institute for Health Transformation say the study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, is believed to be the first to demonstrate children’s exposure to and engagement with food and drinks displayed in prominent areas of a supermarket.
“We found 90% of the displays were promoting unhealthy food and drinks such as soft drinks, chocolate, lollies and processed snack foods and they are extremely effective in capturing children’s attention,” she says. “Promoting unhealthy foods negatively shapes the foods children ask for, prefer and ultimately eat.”
How the study worked
The study involved 15 children aged seven to 12 years who went grocery shopping with their parents. They were fitted with mobile eye-tracking glasses developed by Deakin Institute for Intelligent Systems. The glasses allowed researchers to monitor how much time children spent looking at displays of healthy and unhealthy foods and beverages at supermarket entrances, ends of aisles, checkouts, and individual islands.
At the end of their supermarket visit, the children completed a food recall survey which found that they remembered the food and drinks they fixated on in-store.
“Most children correctly identified where the items were displayed and remembered seeing these same products in other retail stores and online, especially YouTube and TikTok,” says Ms Dove.
“One child recalled seeing ‘Prime, the canned one, in the fridge at the front’. Another, recalling Coke, said they had seen it before in ‘ads on my computer and at Maccas’.
“We found the children spent one in every five minutes visually engaged with unhealthy food and drinks displayed in entrances, checkouts, end-of-aisles, and positioned in pathways and thoroughfares. This is in addition to the products they see in the main aisles.”
A call for improved policy
Professor Kathryn Backholer, Co-Director of the Deakin Institute for Health Transformation and Vice-President of the Public Health Association of Australia, says the findings highlight the need for improved policy settings that reduced children’s exposure to food marketing and better supported parents.
“The feasibility of policies limiting the placement of unhealthy food and beverages in-store is supported in a recent Australian government report on options to restrict unhealthy food marketing to children,” she says.
“Our findings suggest that comprehensive rules covering all prominent in-store locations are needed, similar to laws already in place in the UK.”
