Researchers Examine Effect of Advergames on Children’s Food Intake

Researchers with the University of Amsterdam’s School of Communication Research and Radboud University’s Behavioral Science Institute have published a study examining the effect of advergames on children’s actual food intake. Frans Folkvord, et al., “The effect of playing advergames that promote energy-dense snacks or fruit on actual food intake among children,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, February 2013. The study focused on 270 children asked to play an advergame that promoted an energy-dense snack, fruit, or a non-food product, and then monitored “the free intake of energy-dense snacks and fruit.”

The study’s authors ultimately reported that “an advergame containing food cues increased general energy intake, regardless of the advertised brand or product type (energy-dense snacks or fruit), and this activity particularly increased the intake of energy-dense snack foods.” They also noted that participants who played the fruit advergame “did not consume more fruit than did those in the other groups,” instead choosing more energy-dense food than fruit from the available options. This latter finding contrasted with expectations that fruit-promoting advergames would increase fruit intake among participants.

“Thus, consistent with our expectations, the effects were not product type or brand specific but transferred to other energy-dense snacks that were available,” explained the researchers, who in a separate analysis examined the effect of the advertised brand on the children’s food consumption. “The spillover effect of food commercial on different products other than the advertised product has also been found with television commercials… Playing advergames that contain food messages, regardless of whether they promote energy-dense snacks or fruit, resulted in greater energy-dense caloric intake.”