Hungry, Healthy, Happy! How Emolabeling with Smiley Faces Induces Healthier Food Choices for Children: An Abstract

Abstract

This research aims to examine smiley faces as visual primes that induce healthier food choices in children. As children are exposed to thousands of food advertisements and respond to environmental cues, food labeling and packaging are expected to have a strong impact on children’s food choices. Emolabeling is an image-based labeling strategy using happy and sad faces to visually communicate the level of healthfulness of a food item (Privitera et al. 2015). Prior research in emolabeling found evidence that children opt for healthier choices that are labeled with happy faces vs. sad faces (Privitera et al. 2015). Therefore, visual cues such as images and icons are simple measures to influence children’s food choices.