Healthy Food Looks Serious: How Children Interpret Packaged Food Products

Abstract

Fun food is an overlooked, but increasingly significant, category of food targeted to children in the supermarket. These supermarket products emphasize foods’ play factor, interactivity, artificiality, and general distance from “regular” foods: food is positioned as “fun” and eating as “entertainment.” Using a series of focus groups, this study examined how children (segmented by age and gender) interpret these packaged appeals and how the thematic of fun connects with their understanding of health and nutrition. The study revealed that children are highly attuned to fun foods and its packaging, offering savvy, if flawed, interpretations of how to determine the healthfulness of a packaged good. I argue that the symbolic positioning of children’s food as fun and fake creates several roadblocks in the quest to promote wholesome food habits in children, and that the thematic of fun has unintended consequences that require careful consideration.