Names matter for alcohol and vegetable consumption

In education we are constantly giving new names to low achieving students. We seem to create whole new educationese language every five to ten years. Apparently there is a reason for this. Names really do matter. Changing names changes the way people react.

Here our two studies about names. In the first giving vegetables "better" names increases the amount of them that children ate. In the second children with alcoholic drink names on their clothing were found to consume far more alcohol.

Contact: Jennifer Cole Noble
jlc395@cornell.edu
Cornell Food & Brand Lab
Names turn preschoolers into vegetable lovers

Do you have a picky preschooler who's avoiding their vegetables? A new Cornell University study shows that giving vegetables catchy new names – like X-Ray Vision Carrots and Tomato Bursts – left preschoolers asking for more.

When 186 four-year olds were given carrots called "X-ray Vision Carrots" ate nearly twice as much as they did on the lunch days when they were simply labeled as "carrots." The Robert Wood Johnson-funded study also showed the influence of these names might persist. Children continued to eat about 50% more carrots even on the days when they were no longer labeled. The new findings were presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the School Nutrition Association in Washington DC.


"Cool names can make for cool foods," says lead author Brian Wansink. "Whether it be 'power peas' or 'dinosaur broccoli trees,' giving a food a fun name makes kids think it will be more fun to eat. And it seems to keep working – even the next day," said Wansink.

Similar results have been found with adults. A restaurant study showed that when the Seafood Filet was changed to "Succulent Italian Seafood Filet," sales increased by 28% and taste rating increased by 12%. "Same food, but different expectations, and a different experience," said Wansink, author of "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Eat More Than We Think."

Although the study was conducted in pre-schools, the researchers believe the same naming tricks can work with children. "I've been using this with my kids," said researcher Collin Payne, "Whatever sparks their imagination seems to spark their appetite."
###
The research was funded by Healthy Eating Research grant funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Further details on the study are available at www.SmarterLunchrooms.org.
------------------------------------

Contact: Jason Aldous
Jason.Aldous@hitchcock.org

JAMA and Archives Journals
Owning alcohol-branded merchandise common, associated with drinking behaviors among teens

Between 11 percent and 20 percent of U.S. teens are estimated to own T-shirts or other merchandise featuring an alcohol brand, and those who do appear more likely to transition through the stages of drinking from susceptibility to beginning drinking to binge drinking, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Alcohol-branded merchandise includes T-shirts, hats or other items that feature a particular brand of beverage, according to background information in the article.

Increasing evidence suggests that this specialized type of marketing effectively reaches teenagers and is associated with alcohol use.

Auden C. McClure, M.D., M.P.H., of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Hanover, N.H., and colleagues conducted a telephone survey of a representative sample of 6,522 U.S. adolescents age 10 to 14 years in 2003. The teens reported information about their drinking behaviors and drinking susceptibility, measured by items assessing responses to peer offers, intentions to drink and positive expectancies about drinking. At three follow-up surveys conducted every eight months, participants answered questions about changes in drinking habits and ownership of alcohol-branded merchandise.

The percentage of teens owning alcohol-branded merchandise ranged from 11 percent at the eight-month survey to 20 percent at the 24-month survey. The most commonly owned products were clothing (64 percent) and headwear (24 percent), with the remaining items a wide array that included jewelry, key chains, shot glasses, posters and pens. Most (75 percent) of the brands were beer, including 45 percent that featured the Budweiser label.


Among teens who had never drank alcohol, owning alcohol-branded merchandise and susceptibility to drinking were reciprocally related, with each predicting the other during an eight-month period. In addition, owning alcohol-branded merchandise and having a susceptible attitude toward drinking predicted both the initiation of alcohol use and binge drinking, even after controlling for other risk factors.

"Alcohol-branded merchandise is widely distributed among U.S. adolescents, who obtain the items one-quarter of the time through direct purchase at retail outlets," the authors write. "The results also demonstrate a prospective relationship between alcohol-branded merchandise ownership and initiation of both alcohol use and binge drinking. This is the first study to link alcohol-branded merchandise ownership to more problematic youth alcohol outcomes that predict morbidity [illness] and mortality [death]. Notably, the relationship is independent of a number of known social, personality and environmental risk factors for alcohol use."

Together with the literature to date, the study "provides strong evidence that alcohol-branded merchandise distribution among adolescents plays a role in their drinking behavior and provides a basis for policies to restrict the scope of such alcohol-marketing practices," they conclude.

(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2009;163[3]:211-217. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)

Editor's Note: This study is funded by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

Editorial: Action Needed to Regulate Alcohol-Branded Merchandise

"The evidence is strong that youth exposure to alcohol marketing increases the likelihood of early initiation, which in turn puts young people at greater risk of alcohol-related harm," writes David H. Jernigan, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, in an accompanying editorial.

"Voluntary approaches have been ineffective in reducing the risk. Political will is needed both to improve data collection and reporting and to move toward restrictions that will give young people a chance to grow up alcohol-free. McClure et al provide important new evidence that points to an urgent need for action."

(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2009;163[3]:278-279. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.