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This paper aims to examine the effect of a food-inspired multimedia intervention on children’s fruits and vegetables (F&V) consumption in a real-life setting during lunch.

Children in an elementary school in Bologna (Italy) in third, fourth and fifth grade, aged between 9 and 12 years old, were examined (N = 171). Two different types of messages (generic and specific) were used to test message-tailoring in two separate intervention groups and one control group. The two intervention groups (classes) were presented with multimedia messages during an English lesson before lunchtime, and their eating behavior during lunch at school was observed. All children were served the first and second course, vegetables and fruit during lunchtime. Data was analyzed with R 3.4.2. Mann–Whitney U, Kruskal–Wallis and ANOVA tests were used to test for group differences, ordered logistic regression for modelling fruit and vegetable consumption.

The results show that children receiving a specific message targeting F&V consumed more fruit than the other two study groups. No effect on vegetable consumption was observed. Results from an ordered logit model support the notion that the multimedia message impacted fruit intake in the specific message group when taking other variables into account, such as F&V consumption and availability at home and children’s attitude toward F&V.

While many studies have considered a group of intervention for understanding the effect of multimedia, this study is focused only on the effect of a message (generic or specific). Moreover, participants, children, were not informed that they were participating in a study on fruit and vegetables consumption, and thus were following their daily routine.

This paper seeks to explore the functions of Christmas mythemes for children’s consumption culture development. In addition, the purpose of this study is to provide an insight on the development of Central European Children into customers and how mythemes are associated with the wishing behaviour.

Levi-Strauss’ (1955) structural analysis was used to uncover the mythemes of the Christmas story for Austrian children. These mythemes then informed a thematic analysis of 283 Austrian children’s Christmas letters. Campbell’s (1970) functions of myths were used to reflect on the findings.

The Christmas mythemes uncovered were found to encourage materialism by linking self-enhancement (good acquirement) with self-transcendent (good behaviour) values. The role of myths to relieve the tension between the incongruent values of collective/other-oriented and materialistic values is expanded upon. Such sanctification of selfish good acquisition is aided by the mythemes related especially to the Christkind and baby Jesus. Instead, marketers should use Christmas mythemes which emphasise family and collective/other-centred values.

By first uncovering the “mythemes” related to Christmas, the authors contribute to the academic understanding of Christmas, going beyond origin or single myth understandings and acknowledging the multifaceted components of Christmas. The second contribution is in exploring mytheme’s representation in children’s Christmas letters and reflecting on their functions. This differs from previous literature because it looks at one of the main cultural vehicles for Christmas socialisation and its intersection with the mythemes that feed children’s consumption culture formation. Through the authors’ presentation of a conceptual framework that links mytheme functions with proximal processes using a socioecological viewpoint, the authors demonstrate the guidance of mythemes in children’s development. The third contribution is a reflection on the potential ethical implications for children’s formation of their consumer culture based on the functions of the mythemes. Furthermore, the authors add to the existing body of research by investigating a Central European context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine mothers’ social media accounts that focus on children’s fashion. The authors probed children’s fashion photo practices as representations of the mothers’ extended self and the kind of childhood representations produced by the social media accounts. They also investigated mothers’ perceptions of children’s privacy when engaging in sharenting – the sharing of information about children or parenting online.

The study is based on 16 semi-structured interviews with Finnish mothers who had Instagram accounts focusing on children’s fashion.

Children’s fashion photos play a diverse role in mothers’ identity work. The photos can be used to express a mother’s taste and aesthetic skills, to express values, to fit into peer groups and to store memories of oneself and the children. Through the photos, representations of the prevailing Finnish childhood ideals, such as authenticity, naturalness and playfulness, are reproduced. The mothers perceived the children as part of their extended self and justified sharenting with mother- and child-centered arguments.

Through shedding light on the practices of social media fashion photography, this paper provides insights into how commercialism and social media shape cultural expectations for both motherhood and childhood. The paper contributes to previous research on sharenting, extending it to the context of fashion photography.

This paper aims to present an analysis of the various dimensions of naturalness that shape the consumption practices of parents with young children.

The study builds on semi-structured interviews with 17 mothers and fathers focusing on parental decision-making in everyday consumption from pregnancy to the first years of the child’s life.

Naturalness is a tool allowing parents to navigate in a world of risks and part of an everyday consumption practice that constructs and maintains children as vulnerable and parents as responsible. Parents perceive naturalness as something with three dimensions: familiarity, purity and culture. These three dimensions lead to different parental practices around consumption.

The analysis contributes to the authors’ understanding of parenting, childhood, risk, safety and consumption by showing how and why parents of young children construct naturalness as a three-dimensional ideal in their consumption practices.

Parental feeding practice (PFP) plays an important role in child’s eating behavior and weight status, but less information is available about its role in the Thai family setting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of PFP on child’s gender and body mass index (BMI).

Participants included 227 parents-child dyads from the suburban area of Nakhon Pathom province, Thailand. Children aged 9-12 years and parents who were either child’s mother, father or grandfather/grandmother were enrolled in the study. Body weight, height, waist circumference and body fat were measured in all children. Eating behavior of each child was assessed by using child’s eating questionnaire. Parents also provided their feeding practices in child feeding questionnaires. Information on household food security was also obtained from children’s parents.

There was significant difference in eating behaviors and home environment between child’s genders. For child’s eating behavior, mean total eating scores of girls were significantly greater (p=0.002) than that of boys and that the inappropriate home environment was more found in families of boys than girls. Regarding feeding practice, parents used more food restriction (p=0.008) and monitoring on child’s eating (p=0.042) in girls than boys. Parents put more pressure to eat on the normal weight than obese children (p=0.001). Regression analysis revealed that, apart from parental BMI and household income, PFPs have a significant impact (15.6 percent explained variance) on child’s BMI.

This study highlights the importance of being aware of child’s gender and weight status when feeding practices were provided to them. Nutrition education for parents should take account for parents’ perceptions and concerns as well as the modification of feeding practices to improve children’s eating behaviors.

The aim of this study is to determine which of previously used survey measures can be considered the most appropriate to assess children’s advertising exposure. First, three levels of content specificity for assessing children’s exposure to advertising were distinguished as follows: exposure to the medium, exposure to broad content and exposure to specific (i.e. commercial) content. Second, using longitudinal data from 165 children between 8 and 11 years old, the test-retest reliability and content validity of survey measures from all three levels were examined.

Due to societal concerns about the effects of advertising on children’s well-being, research into this topic is expanding. To enhance knowledge accumulation and bring uniformity to the field, a validated standard survey measure of advertising exposure is needed. The aim of this study is to provide such measures for television and internet advertising.

The findings suggest that all measures provided solid estimates for children’s television and internet advertising exposure. Yet, due to minor differences in reliability and validity, it may be concluded that television advertising exposure can best be measured by asking children how often they watch certain popular (commercial) television networks, either weighting or not weighting for advertising density. Internet advertising exposure can best be measured by asking children how often they use the internet or how often they visit certain popular websites, weighting for advertising density.

The current measures for children’s advertising exposure through traditional media can easily be adapted to fit new media.

This paper seeks to understand children’s responses to food waste in school by exploring children’s views on food waste and empowering them to discuss and develop their own solutions.

Using creative problem-solving approach and photovoice technique, the authors conducted focus group discussions with 28 primary school children in the UK.

Children have a clear understanding of the consequences of food waste for individuals, society and the environment. They displayed negative emotions concerning food waste and responded positively to the possibility of food recycling. Their solutions to reduce food waste will require multiple stakeholder engagement, including self-regulation, peer-monitoring, teacher supervision and family support. However, rather than relying on intervention schemes that require significant adult involvement, children placed a heavy emphasis on self-regulation, playing an active role in addressing food waste in school.

This research extends previous understanding, by showing children as agentic consumers who can shape food waste solutions in school. These findings are of use to primary teachers and local education authorities, to aid children in developing their own solutions to reduce food waste in their own schools.

The present chapter explicates urban and rural childhoods in India. It presents childhood as a dynamic product arising out of an intersection of children's experiences in different familial–socio-cultural contexts, and children's positions within parent–child interactions and relations. These contexts and interactions tend to colour and shape the childhoods that children inhabit. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in urban and rural India, the chapter documents (1) nature of children's engagements and (2) parent–child relations, explicitly observed in parent–child interactions, provisioning warmth and care; parental control and supervision over children and children's participation in the overall fabric of family life and so forth. Forty-eight parents (24 urban and 24 rural) of children aged 7–11 years participated in the study. Qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews and home observations revealed distinctions in urban and rural Indian childhoods. Urban childhood is characterised by rights and privileges, and the centrality of academic pursuits, while rural childhood is featured with subtle induction into economic and social fabric of rural life. Although the world of ‘Indian childhood’ seemed plural, childhood playfulness and learning seemed to be the unifying themes. Geared to the fact that children have to make a living with limited means in the future, both childhoods were accelerated in preparation for future. Dwelling on the complexities in children's lives, this article appreciates diversity and multiplicity in childhoods.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether the IKEA-effect (Norton et al., 2012) – better liking for self-crafted products than for identical products crafted by others – can be exploited to increase liking and consumption of vegetable snacks in children.

A between-subjects experiment was conducted at an after school care facility. In total, 86 children aged four to six either crafted a peacock with vegetables or with non-food objects following an example. After the task, children ate snack vegetables ad libitum, and rated their liking for the vegetables and pride in crafting the peacock.

No significant main effect of the vegetable snack creation on consumption and liking was observed. Also, perceived pride did not mediate the effect of self-crafting vegetable snacks on consumption of and liking for vegetables.

Vegetable consumption did not differ between children who were either simply exposed to vegetable snacks while crafting or those who were crafting the vegetable snacks themselves. The equal consumption might suggest that this is caused by simple exposure, but more research is needed comparing self-crafting and exposure to a condition where there is no initial exposure to vegetables.

Although the IKEA-effect has been demonstrated in adults, this is one of the first studies evaluating the IKEA-effect in children and as a means to increase liking for a generally disliked product in this target group, i.e. vegetables. The IKEA-effect could not be replicated under these more stringent conditions, where the experimental set-up enabled disentangling exposure and crafting effects.

This paper aims to present a description of the development and implementation of a combined school- and community-based intervention for the prevention of overweight among children, using the combined methods of social marketing (SMk) and intervention mapping (IM).

The SMk total process planning (TPP) framework was used, a simple but robust framework that consists of five stages: scoping, development, implementation, evaluation and follow-up. In addition, IM tools were embedded in the development stage to strengthen the development element of the campaign.

The use of the SMk TPP framework led to the selection of one specific target segment and behaviour. IM tools helped to select the most important and modifiable determinants and behaviours in the target segment, as well as to select and appropriately apply theoretical methods for influencing determinant and behaviour change. The resulting “Water Campaign” was aimed at Turkish and Moroccan mothers and their 6-12-year-old-children (target segment). This intervention addresses the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages through the promotion of tap water drinking (target behaviour). The systematic involvement of key stakeholders resulted in capacity-building and co-creation.

A key finding of the present work is that the SMk TPP framework and IM tools can be successfully combined in intervention development, helping to develop enhanced interventions. Combining these methods led to a theory-based and client-oriented intervention, which was directed at multiple ecological levels and which systematically involved key stakeholders. With this detailed description of the intervention development, this paper aims to assist other researchers and practitioners in their quest to develop better interventions.