In 2009, $1.79 billion was spent on food marketing to youth in the United States. There was $1 billion directed at children aged 2–11 years. With the amount of money spent in this area, it is important to understand the impact of this marketing.

-if children recall healthy food promoted through advertisements
-how often children recall food, healthy food, and premiums/tie-ins
-if Burger and McDonalds follow the Children’s Advertising Review Unit.

This is an exploratory research design because the researchers are looking to learn more about the problem of television ads for children and their impact on child healthy food choices.

Food ads that were aired nationally between July 2010 and June 2011 were needed from McDonald’s and Burger King, which are secondary sources. Children’s interpretations of the “television stories” were needed, which are primary sources.

Food ads were accessed from a media surveillance company. Children’s interpretations were accessed through an interview.

Children ages 3-7 years were chosen through electronic medical record search. Cognitive research indicates that young children cannot effectively recognize the persuasive intent of advertising, that’s why ages 3-7 were chosen. The sample size was 100. There were equal number of boys and girls. Children were White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Multi-Race.

Children were scheduled to come in to the lab. Children were shown one of each of the four types of ads. Children were told they were watching a “television story” and they needed to explain what they saw in each one. Researchers asked, “What was the story about?” Responses were videotaped and the audio portion was transcribed. Transcripts of the responses were categorized into food item, healthy food item, and premium/tie-in.

The responses, which were one or more words versus no mention per category, were divided into the three groups. McNemar’s test was used to determine if the likelihood of any re- call differed by ad type. R Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, version 3.0.1, was used for all analyses.

Essentially, children rarely recall healthy food and recall premium/tie-ins as often as food, which violates Children’s Advertising Review Unit guidelines on premiums. McDonalds and Burger King should enhance the visual elements of healthy food options, which could include giving these images more time and greater size or mentioning the food on the track. Results were presented to McDonald’s and Burger King separately.