Trial reportPediatrics2016
Randomized Exposure to Food Advertisements and Eating in the Absence of Hunger Among Preschoolers.
Trial report in Pediatrics, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 15 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
The Relation of Genetic Factors, Food Cues, and Self-Regulation With Excess Consumption and Adiposity in Children
Media Multi-tasking and Cued Overeating: Assessing the Pathway and Piloting an Intervention Using an Attentional Network Framework
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Food marketing, eating and health outcomes in children and adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis.The British journal of nutrition · 2025Pooled it
- The Effects of Food Advertisements on Food Intake and Neural Activity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Recent Experimental Studies.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Pooled it
- Food Marketing Influences Children's Attitudes, Preferences and Consumption: A Systematic Critical Review.Nutrients · 2019Pooled it
- The effect of screen advertising on children's dietary intake: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2019Pooled it
- Genetic associations with consumption of palatable foods in the absence of hunger in response to food cues in children.Pediatric obesity · 2025Trial
- Associations between household chaos and appetitive traits in preschoolers and preadolescents.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Associations between sleep and appetitive traits in higher-income preschoolers: A six-month study.Appetite · 2024Article
- The associations between attentional bias to food cues, parent-report appetitive traits, and concurrent adiposity among adolescents.Eating behaviors · 2024Article
- Associations between advertisement-supported media exposure and dietary quality among preschool-age children.Appetite · 2021Article
- Evaluating the impact of Chile's marketing regulation of unhealthy foods and beverages: pre-school and adolescent children's changes in exposure to food advertising on television.Public health nutrition · 2020Article
- Article
- The prevalence and audience reach of food and beverage advertising on Chilean television according to marketing tactics and nutritional quality of products.Public health nutrition · 2019Article
- Exposure to Child-Directed TV Advertising and Preschoolers' Intake of Advertised Cereals.American journal of preventive medicine · 2019Observational
- Household chaos and screen media use among preschool-aged children: a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2018Article
- Media and Young Minds: Comparing State Screen Media Use Regulations for Children Under 24 Months of Age in Early Care and Education to a National Standard.Maternal and child health journal · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPreschoolers in the United States are heavily exposed to unhealthy food advertisements. Whether such exposure promotes cued eating has not been documented in this age group.
methodsRandomized experiment among 60 children, aged 2 to 5 years, recruited in 2015-2016 from New Hampshire and Vermont. Children completed the experiment at a behavioral laboratory. Children were provided with a healthy snack to consume upon arrival then randomized to view a 14-minute TV program embedded with advertisements for either a food or a department store. Children were provided 2 snack foods to consume ad libitum while viewing the TV program; 1 of those snacks was the food advertised. Eating in the absence of hunger (EAH) was operationalized as the kilocalories of snack foods consumed. t tests were used to compare EAH by advertisement condition; linear regression models assessed effect modification by the child's age, sex, BMI percentile, and parental feeding restriction.
resultsMean age was 4.1 (SD 0.9) years, 55% of children were male, 80% were non-Hispanic white, and 20% were overweight or obese. There were no differences in child or socioeconomic characteristics by advertisement condition. Child BMI was not related to EAH. Mean kilocalories consumed during the EAH phase was greater among children exposed to the food advertisements (126.8, SD: 58.5) versus those exposed to the nonfood advertisements (97.3, SD: 52.3; P = .04), an effect driven by greater consumption of the advertised food (P < .01). There was no evidence of effect modification.
conclusionsFindings suggest that food advertisement exposure may encourage obesogenic-eating behaviors among the very young.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.