title: Healthy choice?: Exploring how children evaluate the healthfulness of packaged foods.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Today's supermarket contains hundreds of packaged foods specifically targeted at children. Yet research has shown that children are confused by the various visual messages found on packaged food products. This study explores children's nutrition knowledge with regard to packaged food products, to uncover strengths and difficulties they have in evaluating the healthfulness of these foods.
  
  
  METHODS
  Focus groups were conducted with children (grades 1-6). Particular attention was paid to the ways children made use of what they know about nutrition when faced with the visual elements and appeals presented on food packaging.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Children relied heavily on packages' written and visual aspects--including colour, images, spokes-characters, front-of-package claims--to assess the healthfulness of a food product. These elements interfere with children's ability to make healthy choices when it comes to packaged foods.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Choosing healthy packaged foods is challenging for children due to competing sets of knowledge: one pertains to their understanding of visual, associational cues; the other, to translating their understanding of nutrition to packaged foods. Canada's Food Guide, along with the curriculum taught to Canadian children at schools, does not appear to provide children with the tools necessary to navigate a food environment dominated by packaged foods.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. charlene.elliott@ucalgary.ca
authors.forename: Charlene
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Elliott
authors.forename: Meaghan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brierley
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003116:Color; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D005515:Food Labeling; D018857:Food Packaging; D005518:Food Preferences / Q000523:psychology*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009753:Nutritive Value
keywords: Child; Food; Food Labeling; Food Packaging; Food Preferences; Health Literacy; Nutrition; Nutrition Labelling; Product Labelling