Healthy or Not? The Impact of Price And Peers on Young Teens’ Snack Purchases
Many young people are overweight, often due to wrong food choices. A study in Eating Behaviors shows how taxes, subsidies, and peers can influence snack choices of young teens. This knowledge can help shape interventions promoting healthy snacking.
Take aways
- Taxes on unhealthy snacks can stimulate young teens to buy less unhealthy and more healthy snacks.
- Subsidies on healthy snacks can stimulate teens’ choice for healthy snacks, but only when peers are present.
- Peers play an important role in the choice for healthy or unhealthy snacks.
Study information
The question?
What influence have peers and price on youngsters’ snack choices?
Who?
89 12-14 year-olds, who were overweight. Equal male and female
Where?
United States
How?
The teens were told not to eat or drink (except water) two hours before the research started. During the test one group of participants visited a (manipulated) convenience store. The store sold both healthy and unhealthy snacks. During nine research laps, the teens were asked to buy two items they would want to eat, for a maximum of $ 3,00 for each lap. The researchers were manipulating the prices of the products in the store, to see what influence the price tag had on healthy or unhealthy food choices. A second group of teens were asked to do the exact same thing, except that these teens went shopping with a peer. In this way, researchers could compare the impact of pricing when teens were alone or in the presence of peers.
Facts and findings
- The price of food played an important role in the teens’ snack shopping behavior.
- Raising the price of unhealthy foods made all teens buy less unhealthy and more healthy snacks.
- Lowering the price of healthy food had no effect on purchase behaviors when participants were in the convenience shop alone.
- However, decreasing the price of healthy foods, did affect healthy food choices when participants went shopping together with a peer.
- Therefore, taxing of unhealthy foods and subsidizing healthy foods can improve teens’ snack choices, but peer influence should be taken into account.