Overweight Cartoon Characters Negatively Influence Kids' Eating Habits

As a child one of my favorite cartoons was "Popeye," and one of my favorite characters on the show was J. Wellington Wimpy, known pretty much exclusively by his last name. And man, oh man, did that Wimpy love his hamburgers.

The thing that struck me about Wimpy was not only that he enjoyed burgers, but that he huffed then down so easily. It was just a flip of the finger, burger into mouth, and down it went in a single gulp. It only dawned on me later that burgers are tougher to get down, something that takes some serious masticating.

This makes me think that this must have an effect on children. It's not exactly fast-food propaganda, but it's close. And now, there's science to back up the claim.

Researchers from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder created two cartoon characters -- one overweight and one of "normal" weight. The characters were shown to children between the ages of 6 and 14. They then received either a toy reward or a "taste test" choice with cookies and candy.

The study found that children who viewed the overweight character were more likely to consume more snacks than those who had seen than the thinner cartoon character.

So, what's going on here? To understand, you have to grasp the concept of priming.

"This is the first study that we know of that looks at what's called behavioral priming in kids," lead author Margaret C. Campbell said. "There's work in adults that show different priming effects, one in which people who saw older people walked more slowly. People see somebody from a stereotyped group they associate with a type of behavior, and they're more likely to participate with that behavior."

Which isn't to say that these overweight characters are purposefully being created in order to coerce children to get their parents to buy more junk food. "I would guess that it's a side effect," Campbell said. "Kids obviously aren't born with stereotypes, but at some point they develop them. I doubt marketers are doing it intentionally."

However, despite the fact that it's not being done on purpose -- and, therefore, nearly impossible for regulatory measures to step in -- there are ways to counter this effect.

In a subsequent study, Campbell's group asked students a variety of health-centric questions before showing them the various cartoon characters. By simply asking the questions beforehand (priming them, in a way, with health-related information), the amount of cookies and candy that the two sets of children consumed leveled out.

"Our hypothesis was that if kids were reminded about what they were already taught about healthy choices before exposure we'd be less likely to see the effect," Campbell said. "Not only do we need to teach kids about healthy choices, we need to make sure they're thinking about it when they're making those choices."