Cheap, legal and everywhere: high sugar cereals are offered to children of children | Mark Mahoni – Talahasi Democrat

Brands, including Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios and Froot Loops, make up 41% of total household cereal purchases. About one -third of households with children bought at least one of the nine brands in a given month.

In contrast, says Harris, there was no connection to increased purchases when ads were targeted at adults.

“This study shows that it is really important that these high-sugar cereal companies can actually reach children-that parents would probably not buy them if their children did not ask them for them,” Harris says.

Lindsay Smith Thaly, a North Carolina Food Researcher at the University of Chapel Hill, says these voluntary efforts don’t matter. “We know a long time that marketing unwanted food for children has been very common in the United States and it continues to be common, although companies promise to do better,” she says.

The study is the first to directly link the exposure of food advertising by children to adults with subsequent purchases of these foods. Thaly, who has not participated in the study, says the discoveries offer new evidence of how food marketing affects what children are asking their parents to buy – a concept known as Pester Power.