Peggy Liu, Ben L. Fryrear Chair in Marketing and Associate Professor of Business Administration, Katz Graduate School of Business
Situation: There is increasing interest in nudging parents to make healthier meal choices for children. However, ironically, after making a healthy meal choice for their children, parents then choose an unhealthier meal for themselves to eat. Parents do this out of concern that their child might not eat their healthy kid’s meal, viewing their own meal as a backup option they could share with their child.
The White House launched a challenge to “End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities” in March 2023, which included a focus on increasing healthy food options for children. In response to this Challenge, various organizations—including cities, non-profits, and companies like DoorDash and Instacart—have committed to taking actions to make healthy food options for children more accessible, such as changing their advertising or food offerings. This Challenge is the most recent among various efforts by policymakers and companies to increase healthy eating among children.
Key Findings: Our research concluded that efforts to encourage healthier eating among children can sometimes unintentionally backfire for parents. We found that parents tend to choose unhealthy foods for themselves after choosing a healthy meal for their child. This happens because parents are uncertain if their child will eat or like the healthy kid’s meal, and so they use their own meal as a backup option to share and ensure their child at least eats something.
This is not an ideal dynamic. For one, it could result in parents eating unhealthier, and children may also end up eating unhealthily if they mostly eat from their parent’s plate. Additionally, it does not set a good example of healthy eating for children.
Simple changes to menu language can nudge parents to choose healthy for themselves and not use their own meal choice as a backup for their child.
Methodology: In one field experiment conducted in partnership with a nursery school, parents were offered a free family dinner. They first chose a meal for their child from a healthy kid’s menu – and then a meal for themselves from a menu with both healthy and unhealthy options.
Half of the parents—those randomly assigned to the intervention condition—saw a menu that prompted them to think of their own meal as “for you and only you!” The other—those randomly assigned to the control condition—did not see this additional prompt. This intervention was successful: it led parents to be 32.4% more likely to choose healthy for themselves.
Recommendations: These findings highlight that policymakers’ and companies’ efforts to improve healthy eating among children should also consider the impact on parents’ choices for themselves. Importantly, easily implementable interventions can help ensure that such initiatives help the entire family to engage in healthier eating.
To nudge parents to make healthy food choices for both their child and themselves, policymakers and marketers—such as for restaurants, meal delivery services, pre-packaged meals—can use simple marketing communications that encourage parents to either think of their own meal as their own (and not something to share) or remind parents of their child’s future needs to develop healthy eating habits.
Researchers: Peggy Liu; Kelley Gullo Wight, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University; Lingrui Zhou, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong; and Gavan J. Fitzsimons, Edward S. & Rose K. Donnell Professor of Marketing and Psychology, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.
Additional details: Journal of Marketing Research
