Just because you’re vegan doesnt mean you can’t be a fattie. This is my all time favorite list of sickening sweet treats that are cruelty free but have no mercy on your waste line.

1. Sweet and Sarah Smores: A gram cookie crust topped with vegan marshmellow and coated in chocolate. In addition to the original variety one comes with a layer of peanut butter. There is no calorie listing on them. I imagine with good reason. Some whole foods stores carry them an you can also order online

2. Go max’s candy bars are amazing. They have versions of all the well known candy bars with names that are a parody of the originals. My favorite Jokerz is obviosly a reference to snickers. You can get them at wholefoods or mail order them with the form on their website

3. Soyummi pudding is creamy and delicious. It’s sweet but not overly so. It really enjoy the lime and cherry flavoried. Its available at several grocery stores.  for more info check out their site

4.Primal Strips are great for the vegan who misses jerky. They come in several varieties. I like teriyakiand thia peanut the best. They are avaliable at whole foods and health food stores. To track down a buy them go to their website

5. Frappachinos! Thank you starbucks. You can now order a frappachino with soy milk. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy this made me. Now if only they would make a pumpkin spice syrup without dairy.

6. Assorted Candy. Sour Patch Kids, Sweedish Fish, pixie sticks, bottle caps, Red Vines, and Skittle( gelatin was recently removed from skittles) are technically vegan. Some might argue are about trace ingredients but this is as vegan as “normal” candy gets

I will update this article if I find any other tasty vegan junkfoods. Do you have a favorit vegan junk food.

Perth researchers have linked attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder with “western-style” diets in teenage sufferers.

The Telethon Institute for Child Health and Research study examined the diets of 1800 adolescents, categorising them as either eating a healthy mix of fruit, vegetables, whole grains and fish or the “western-style” highly-processed, fried and take-away foods.

The report found those on a “western” dietary pattern may be eating more food additives, flavours or colours, which could lead to hyperactivity or changes to chemicals that control parts of the brain dealing with attention and concentration.

But the Institute’s leader of nutrition studies, Associate Professor Wendy Oddy, said the type of study undertaken meant researchers couldn’t be sure if “poor diet leads to ADHD or whether ADHD leads to poor dietary choices and cravings”.

They spoke to teenagers involved in the Raine Study, which assessed pregnant women in 1989 and collected information about their children as they grew up.

The findings, which will be published in the Journal of Attention Disorders and is currently online, showed teenagers who lived on a diet of highly-processed foods more than doubled their risk of being diagnosed with ADHD compared to healthy eaters.

“We looked at the dietary patterns amongst the adolescents and compared the diet information against whether or not the adolescent had received a diagnosis of ADHD by the age of 14 years,” Dr Oddy said.

Parents were asked if their child had ever been diagnosed with the disorder by a qualified health professional and then research assistants checked a diagnosis had been made. Overall 115 teenagers from the group had ADHD.

Researchers took into account variables such as the family’s financial situation, whether the mother smoked while pregnant and the amount of food the teenagers ate and the exercise they did.

The study backed up previous research that found boys had a higher chance of developing the disorder and those who exercised at least twice a week decreased the odds of an ADHD diagnosis.

“When we looked at specific foods, having an ADHD diagnosis was associated with a diet high in takeaway foods, processed meats, red meat, high fat dairy products and confectionary,” she said.

“We suggest that a Western dietary pattern may indicate the adolescent has a less optimal fatty acid profile, whereas a diet higher in omega-3 fatty acids is thought to hold benefits for mental health and optimal brain function.”

The possible absence of “micronutrients” in the western diet could result in “suboptimal” brain function in teenagers, the report states.

It went on to say that adolescent ADHD sufferers were predisposed to choose unhealthy foods to snack on.

Dr Oddy said while this study suggests that diet may be implicated in ADHD, more research is needed to determine the nature of the relationship.

The diet of the children living in the small village of Boulon in Burkina Faso was similar to that of people living in the modern Western world thousands of years ago, shortly after the birth of agriculture.

It consisted mainly of cereals, beans, nuts and vegetables.

But the Italian children ate higher quantities of meat, fat and sugar.

Only those who were still breast-feeding harboured bacteria resembling the African children’s - indicating diet may dominate other factors such as ethnicity, sanitation, geography or climate, say the researchers.

The trillions of microbes that inhabit the human gut are considered an essential ‘organ’ that helps to digest food, protect against disease-causing bugs and limit inflammation.

Paediatrician Dr Paolo Lionetti, of Florence University, and colleagues said children in industrialised countries who eat low-fibre, high-sugar ‘Western’ diets may reduce microbial richness - potentially contributing to a rise in allergic and inflammatory diseases in the last half-century.

They said: “Western developed countries successfully controlled infectious diseases during the second half of the last century, by improving sanitation and using antibiotics and vaccines.

“At the same time, a rise in new diseases such as allergic, autoimmune disorders, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) both in adults and in children has been observed, and it is hypothesized that improvements in hygiene together with decreased microbial exposure in childhood are considered responsible for this increase.

“The gastrointestinal microflora plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of IBD and recent studies demonstrate obesity is associated with imbalance in the normal gut microbiota.”

The researchers, whose findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, added: “The lessons learned from the Burkina Faso children’s microbiota prove the importance of sampling and preserving microbial biodiversity from regions where the effects of globalisation on diet are less profound.

“The worldwide diversity of the microbiome from ancient communities, where gastrointestinal infections can make the difference between life and death, represents a goldmine for studies aimed at elucidating the role of gut microbiota on the subtle balance between health and disease and for the development of novel probiotics.”

(NaturalNews) A diet including unlimited amounts of junk food can cause rats to become so addicted to the unhealthy diet that they will starve themselves rather than go back to eating healthy food, researchers have discovered.

In a series of studies conducted over the course of three years and published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Scripps Florida scientists Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny have shown that rats’ response to unlimited junk food closely parallels well-known patterns of drug addiction — even down to the changes in brain chemistry.

“What we have are these core features ofaddiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features,” Kenny said.

In their first study, the researchers fed rats on either a balanced diet or on the same diet plus unlimited access to junk foods purchased at a local supermarket, including processed meats and cakes. Within a short time period, the rats on thejunk food diet began to eat compulsively and quickly became overweight.

“They’re taking in twice the amount of calories as the control rats,” Kenny said.

The researchers hypothesized that the rats were eating compulsively because, like drug addicts, they had become desensitized to smaller amounts and needed more and more for the same rush of pleasure.

Many recreational drugs work by directly stimulating the brain’s pleasure centers, particularly the dopamine receptor known as D2. Overstimulation of this receptor causes the body to start producing less dopamine, leading the addict to compensate by taking more of the drug.

Since dopamine can also be released by pleasurable activities such as food or sex, Kenny and Johnson speculated that food addiction could develop in the same way. To test whether the rats had, in fact, become habituated to dopamine, the researchers took the rats from the first experiment and hooked their brains up to a device that would directly stimulate their D2 receptors when they ran on a wheel.

Rats eating a junk food diet ran on the wheel significantly longer than rats fed a normal diet, suggesting that their receptors had indeed become desensitized. This “profound” desensitization occurred after just five days on a junk food diet.

“They’re not experiencing rewards the way they should,” Kenny said. “When you experience that, one way of feeling better is to go back to the junk food.”

“They lose control. This is the hallmark of addiction.”

In another test of their addiction hypothesis, the researchers used a virus to block the D2 receptors in healthy rats. All those rats soon became compulsive eaters.

“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings,” Johnson said.

Having established that the junk food rats had become addicted, Johnson and Kenny wanted to know how far this addiction would push them. So they took both junk-food addicted rats and rats that had not previously been exposed to such food, and exposed them to electrical shocks whenever they ate junk. Rats that had just been introduced to junk food quickly stopped eating it, while the addicted rats ignored the discomfort and kept eating.

Perhaps the most shocking finding came when the researchers took away the addicted rats’ access to junk food and started feeding them only healthy rat chow again — the same diets the rats had eaten as pups. When junk food was no longer available, the rats simply refused to eat for two weeks.

“They actually voluntarily starved themselves,” Kenny said.

“It’s almost as if you break these things, it’s very, very hard to go back to the way things were before. Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted.”

The research strongly suggests that many modern humans also suffer from junk food addictions. Kenny notes, however, that unlike the rats, all humans with access to junk food do not become obese. He attributes this difference to the influence of health knowledge and social pressure in moderating people’s natural eating habits.

“The rats don’t suffer from the same social pressures that we do,” he said.

The idea of junk food addiction is not a new one, and the dopamine-junk food connection was actually put forward by former FDA Commissioner David Kessler in his best-selling book, The End of Overeating.

“Certainly, we see this addictive pattern in humans,” nutritionist Sandy Livingston said. “They know they shouldn’t overeat, but they do it anyway.”

Livingston expressed hope that better knowledge about the biochemical side of food addiction might result in lessened guilt and judgment surrounding obesity.

“A lot of people blame themselves — ‘Why don’t I have any willpower?’” she said.

“Food can be highly addictive,” said author and nutritional supplement producer Jordan Rubin. “When people describe overeating and weight loss as a battle, this is why.”

He called for more research into which individual components of junk food, such as MSG, might be behind its addictive effects.

Obesity researcher Ralph DiLeone of Yale University noted that more research is needed into the long-term effects of such addiction, even if an animal later switches its diet and loses weight.

“They might be a normal weight, but how they respond to food in the future may be permanently altered,” he said.

Suggesting yet another area for future research, Kenny has expressed hope that better biochemical understanding of food addiction might someday enable the development of a drug or vaccine as a treatment for compulsive eating.

Johnson and Kenny’s research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Bank of America and The Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation.

Girls Aloud songstress Cheryl Cole, who’s pulled out of X Factor because of the illness, has apparently shrunk to just SIX stone.

We all know that junk food can be extremely addictive. You know the feeling – it’s mid-afternoon and you can think of nothing you’d rather do than grab a Mars bar or a packet of crisps. Have you ever stopped to consider though, that the cravings may all be in your head?

Physcologist, David Moxton has expressed his opinion that the first step to any weight loss plan should involve a change in attitudes towards food.

He goes on to say that people need to develop a healthy mental attitude before they start slimming. “Food is heavily influenced by psychological factors in lots of different ways,” the expert said, adding: “you can’t tackle eating behaviour without looking at some of these deeper psychological issues.”

Altering dietary patterns is likely to prove difficult but with the average British person spending £1,000 on junk food every year we could definitely do with redefining our attitudes towards food, as an entire nation.

Mmm..donuts!

When we also consider the fact that one quarter of British adults are obese, according to the latest Department of Health figures, the argument for change is strengthened. The same figures showed that just under a third of women were overweight, while 42% of men were obese. These statistics are lower than those currently recorded in America where two thirds of adults are obese or overweight. However, but experts predict that it will not be long before Britain follows suit, given recent trends.

National Junk Food Day is Wednesday, July 21.

Not really. A bona fide national day requires an Act of Congress, and whatever you may think about the government, it’s unlikely that representatives from any political party would support such a notion, especially now, when our population is getting fatter and fatter.

But across the U.S. lots of folks know about this particular occasion, whose sole purpose is to encourage everyone to pig out on snacks, candy, soda and whatever else you can eat that’s fattening and has no nutritional value.

Who — or what — made up this bogus holiday? A rebellious teenager whose parent is vigilant against soda, candy and chips? A health-conscious grown-up who needs an excuse to binge one day a year? A lobbyist for the beverage/candy/snack food industry, which just wants everyone to buy more, more, more?

More to the point, is there really a need for a special day to do all the things so many of us already do on a regular basis? Consumption of so-called junk food has skyrocketed in recent times.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, about two-thirds of all Americans over age 20 are overweight, about one-third are obese; children are following fast, with more than 10 percent overweight. Other countries are catching up. But you know the story by now and don’t need the government to tell you what’s clearly in plain sight — look around — or that obesity and certain illnesses such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes go hand-in-hand.

First lady Michelle Obama has taken childhood obesity on as her particular calling in the Let’s Move campaign (http://letsmove.gov). One of its first goals is the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, one of the rare bipartisan efforts pending in Congress. The CNA review, scheduled for 2009, was postponed to 2010, giving the government more opportunity to improve school lunches.

But there’s more to becoming overweight or obese than school lunches, which, after all, focuses only on children, not anyone reading this. Doctors, scientists, teachers, nutritionists and others all have opinions on how so many of us got so heavy and what we need to do to slim down and become healthier. Thousands of books are written on the subject. In our personal efforts, we join diet support groups and go to the gym. The junk food industry is big-time. So is the diet industry. So is the insurance industry whose customers need coverage for the ailments that result from being overweight.

Every five years the government issues nutritional guidelines, and the 2010 preliminary report has just been published (http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/DGAs2010-DGACReport.htm). It reaffirms an old maxim we all heard from our grandmothers: Eat in moderation and don’t eat more than you can burn off. The report suggests that we eat more plant-based foods, whole grains, low-fat dairy and seafood, and that we eat less salt and be more aware of how many calories we are consuming.

Which gets us back to junk food.

People differ on the specifics, but everyone agrees that junk food is the opposite of healthy, that it is often high in calories, fat, salt or caffeine and offers little or no nutritional value. Typical junk foods range from chips and candy to cheeseburgers and fries to sugared breakfast cereals, doughnuts and the like. Some consider foods such as pizza junk, but others say that because it contains cheese and (typically) tomato, it can pass as a healthy-enough grilled cheese sandwich, especially if it has other vegetables and, hope against hope, a whole-wheat crust.

Apparently, one of the real problems with junk food is that its fat content triggers the brain to want more food, making it hard to satisfy real hunger even if, say, you eat a whole 7-ounce bag of potato chips (about 1,100 calories). And the sugar in candy consumption keeps insulin levels up, which confuses your metabolism and sends false signals that you need more to eat. In addition, people who eat junk have less room for nutritious foods. In severe cases that could lead to malnutrition, which seems counterintuitive when a person is hefty.

Whether or not you celebrate National Junk Food Day and whether or not you are among the majority of Americans who are overweight, it’s likely that you like to snack. Who doesn’t? And while no one wants to be lectured, you should know that there are beverages and snacks that are healthy and also delicious, and that are easy to make at home. If you grab for one of these instead of that sugar-laden soda, you might be surprised that you’re filled up emotionally and nutritionally, that it tastes better than you imagined and that you feel better after eating than you do after consuming junk. You might shed some pounds, too.

The first two recipes for today are for an East Indian beverage called a lassi, which is similar to a smoothie. Lassis are typically sweetened (mine are not) and basically have the same nutritional content as a smoothie.

Strawberry Mint Lassi

1 cup plain low-fat Greek style yogurt

1/2 cup chopped strawberries

2 ice cubes

2 tablespoons milk

8 mint leaves

Place the yogurt, berries, ice cubes, milk and mint leaves in a blender jar and whirl for at least 30 seconds or until the ice has been thoroughly blended and the beverage is frothy. Makes 1.

Mango Lassi

1 cup plain low-fat Greek style yogurt

1 mango, peeled and chopped

1 tablespoon honey, optional

4 ice cubes

2 tablespoons milk

Place the yogurt, mango, optional honey, ice cubes and milk in a blender jar and whirl for at least 30 seconds or until the ice has been thoroughly blended and the beverage is frothy. Makes 1.

Spiced Almonds

1 teaspoon curry powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 cups coarsely chopped almonds

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons agave syrup

1 tablespoon orange juice

In a small bowl, mix together the curry powder, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Place the almonds in a large unoiled saute pan and cook over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes or until the nuts are lightly toasted. Add the spice mixture and toss ingredients. Pour in the olive oil, agave syrup and orange juice. Cook, stirring constantly for 3 to 5 minutes or until toasty brown. Remove from the pan and let cool. Makes 2 cups.

Lemon-Pepper Hummus with Tahini

15-16 ounce can chickpeas

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup tahini 2 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Carrot or celery sticks or whole wheat pita bread cut into wedges

Drain the chickpeas, but reserve the liquid. Place the chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini, olive oil, garlic and cumin in a food processor. Add 4 tablespoons reserved bean liquid and process until well blended. Add more bean liquid for a smoother texture. Garnish with chopped parsley. Serve with carrot or celery sticks or whole wheat pita wedges. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

Yogurt-Cucumber Dip

3 cups thick, Greek-style nonfat yogurt

3 medium cucumbers, peeled and deseeded

6 radishes, grated, optional

1 large clove garlic, minced

3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoons olive oil kosher salt if desired crudites or whole-wheat pita bread wedges

Place the yogurt in a bowl. Grate the cucumbers, press down on them through a strainer to extract as much liquid as possible, and add them to the yogurt. Add the radishes, if used, the garlic, mint, dill, lemon juice and olive oil. Stir to blend all the ingredients thoroughly. Taste for seasoning and add salt if desired. Serve with crudites or whole-wheat pita wedges.

Makes about 4 cups, serving 10 to 12 people.

Ronnie Fein is a cookbook author and cooking teacher in Stamford. Visit her food blog, Kitchen Vignettes, at www.ronniefein.com.

n the 1998 film Bulworth, Warren Beatty’s wayward Senator loses his mind and reveals how US politics is bankrolled by big corporations. While not matching the Hollywood actor’s looks, the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, seems similarly to have taken leave of his senses in a series of announcements that have astonished commentators by their rapidity and foolishness.

The difference is that this former private secretary to Norman Tebbit has not been railing against corporations. Instead, he has been embedding their views in policy.

While other coalition ministers are making plans to protect the public from rogue banks and energy giants, Mr Lansley has been fending off proposals to tackle the junk-food giants. Campaigners began to realise something was afoot on 16 June when, with his support, Conservative MEPs killed off traffic-light labelling, which exposes hidden salt, fat and sugar. By doing so, his party went against the advice of the British Medical Association, the British Dietetic Association, the British Heart Foundation and dozens of other health and consumer groups.

A week later the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence published a plan to prevent 40,000 deaths from heart disease, calling for a ban on trans fats, no TV junk-food advertising before 9pm and restrictions on takeaways close to schools. The British Heart Foundation, the Faculty of Public Health and the Royal College of Physicians supported those proposals. Yet the Department of Health rejected them outright on the day of publication, saying that people should just eat better and exercise more. On 30 June, Mr Lansley ridiculed Jamie Oliver’s campaign on school dinners, saying it had been a flop, and a week later scrapped £75m of funding for the Change4Life anti-obesity campaign, for which he appealed for funding from… makers of fatty foods.

This week Mr Lansley was waving his axe at the Food Standards Agency, set up 10 years ago following the last Conservative government’s cover-up of BSE and which devised the traffic-light system on food that would have hit junk-food sales. Though still awaiting the results of a review of “arm’s length bodies”, Mr Lansley intends to hand the FSA’s role on public health to the Department of Health. While admittedly too timid with food firms, the FSA has saved thousands of lives by cajoling them into reformulating products. Jack Winkler, nutrition professor at London Metropolitan University, described its salt campaign as “the single best nutrition policy in the UK since the Second World War”.

Throughout, Mr Lansley has parroted the junk-food industry’s line that there is no such thing as bad food, only a bad diet. There is some truth to this: people must take responsibility for what they eat. But the mantra ignores the forces arrayed against healthy-eating. Manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of pounds promoting addictive and enticing fatty and sugary brands – against Change4Life’s £25m-a-year budget; most labelling hides the unhealthiness of these high-margin products, and supermarkets promote them far more aggressively than they do fresh produce.

Some wonder if Mr Lansley has been nobbled by lobbyists. He mentioned Unilever while opposing traffic-light labelling. Private Eye suggests that Lucy Neville-Rolfe, head of corporate affairs at Tesco, advises him. Yet the Electoral Commission has no record of substantial donations to the Conservative Party from multinational food firms. We must assume the Secretary of State really believes that public health professionals are incompetent.

At almost no public cost, he could have slimmed a corpulent industry that has made most people look as if they have been inflated with air through their belly button. Instead, we will all be paying the hospital bill for obesity for decades to come.

The Healthy Kids Act is now in effect. It’s goal, to prevent childhood obesity. But this new law comes with a lot of restrictions and schools in Iowa are making some big changes.

Fried foods will no longer be served in school cafeterias in Iowa. Starch food items like french fries can only be served in small portions and just twice a week. Sodas and sports drinks will no longer be allowed and only non-fat milk will be served.

School officials say keeping the fat content and sodium count low will make the school’s food budget of two dollars per child even tighter but they are not worried.

“We are not anticipating raising the prices of lunches to the kids at this particular point. We feel confident that we should be able to get through this and get a resolution and still be in compliance with everything,” said Rich Luze, Sioux City’s School Food Service Director.

Kids are not only going to notice a change in their cafeteria menus. Vending machines will also have to include healthier items that meet the act’s guidelines.

Over the years, we’ve paid a great deal of attention to the use of cartoon characters to sell fresh produce:

The Bitter Truth About Promoting Produce To Children

Is It A License To Print Money?

Pundit’s Mailbag – Characters and Marketing

Grape “Character” Analysis

Pundit’s Mailbag – PBH/Imagination Farms Alliance Questioned

Being Consumer-Focused

Disney Disconnect

There was a burst of excitement over this marketing technique, especially when various studios decided to become more flexible with their financial demands as they realized they wanted to be seen on the side of the angels.

Yet that initial enthusiasm seems to have waned. Kroger, for example, held a unique license to use Disney characters on many food products – completely separate from the Disney Gardens project. Yet that project was quietly terminated – not likely because sales were too high.

Grimmway Farms was once making many headlines for taking on the Nickelodeon characters — another project that has seen its day.

Now to some extent the challenges of cartoon-character marketing in produce are unique to produce:

First, generally retailers only carry one brand of each item. So whereas the cereal aisle can have a kids-oriented cereal and the stores can perhaps pick up extra business because they still sell adult cereals, produce departments have to switch what they currently sell to the cartoon version, and there is the possibility that this could dissuade as many buyers as it attracts. In other words, even if young children push their parents to purchase Dora the Explorer baby carrots, maybe 15-year-old boys banish the item from their lunch boxes and this results in less total demand.

Second, the companies that took on the brands fell into one of two categories. Either they were industry leaders, which meant they had precious little incentive to push customers to favor the cartoon brand and simply had it available at customer request, or they used it in markets where one chain wanted to differentiate itself or the companies that took on the cartoon licensing were secondary players in that commodity, without the production, sales staff and marketing program to boost demand.

All the sudden, though, the latest headlines are filled with words claiming that characters are very powerful influencers with children. USA Today headlined its article, Cartoon Characters Tilt Kids’ Food Choices Toward Junk Food:

Kids think snacks taste better when popular cartoon characters such as Shrek and Dora the Explorer are plastered on the packages, a study shows.

Nutrition experts have long argued that such images shouldn’t be used to market junk food to kids, especially given the childhood obesity epidemic. About one-third of children and teens in the USA are either overweight or obese.

For the latest study, researchers at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity gave 40 children, ages 4 to 6, three identical pairs of snacks: graham crackers, gummy fruit and carrots.

One package of each food had a cartoon character — Scooby-Doo, Dora the Explorer or Shrek — on the front; the other didn’t. Children were asked if the foods tasted the same or if one tasted better.

The findings, reported online today in the journal Pediatrics:

• More than two-thirds said they would choose the snack with the character on the package.
• About half of the kids said the foods tasted better from packages with the cartoon characters.

“This shows how powerful and influential these characters can be,” says Yale researcher Christina Roberto, the study’s lead author.

Although some cartoon characters are on healthful foods such as fruits and vegetables, the majority of characters are pushing junk foods, she says.

Parents face an uphill battle when they go to the supermarket with their children because kids are drawn to the characters on products, Roberto says.

We’ve read the study, titled Influence of Licensed Characters on Children’s Taste and Snack Preferences and found it raised at least as many questions as it answered.

The researcher’s, Christina A. Roberto, MS, Jenny Baik, BA, Jennifer L. Harris, MBA, PhD and Kelly D. Brownell, PhD from Yale  University’s Rudd Center, tried to make the study robust but there were some real questions about the validity of the study. It had a very small sample size – only 40 children were studied. And this was only 50% of the group they invited to participate.

No research seems to have been done on the 50% of parents that did not give permission for their children to participate, but it seems at least plausible that these might be parents more skeptical of the whole idea of cartoons and didn’t want their children being exposed to more of them. If so, the sample is self-selecting for families more enthusiastic about cartoon characters, an attitude that could easily be reflected in the children.

The researchers also note that the study deviates from protocol typical for double-blind peer-reviewed studies. Double-blind procedures mean that “…neither the subjects of the experiment nor the persons administering the experiment know the critical aspects of the experiment; a double-blind procedure is used to guard against both experimenter bias and placebo effects.”

In other words, the methodology chosen for this study meant the researchers knew both the point of the study and which product had the character on it. This means that intentionally or unintentionally the experimenter could have influenced the children.

Our experience in merchandising also points to another possible flaw in study design. The researchers seem to have contrasted a blank package with one with the character on it. But this is problematic. It might be that children prefer bright colors or an “object of interest” on their products. In other words, maybe if the non-character boxes had bright color flowers on them or pictures of landmarks or beautiful people or pictures of familiar items, say toys, that children would have preferred those.

One gets the sense that the researchers are straining to reach a conclusion that they wanted. For example, there is a reference that claims that there exists “correlational data that suggested the appearance of SpongeBob SquarePants on vegetables at Grimmway and Boskovich Farms coincided with an increase in the sales of those items.”

The “data” — if one wants to dignify it as such — consists of an article in The San Diego Union-Tribune, titled Hey, Popeye! It’s SpongeBob Spinach, which the researchers accessed on March 1, 2005! The article says nothing about increased sales from the cartoon characters – it can’t, since the article is a piece about the fact that such characters will, in the future, appear on produce. The photo caption clearly says: “SpongeBob SquarePants will be promoting healthy veggies, like spinach and carrots, starting next month.” Note the word “will” – that is pretty sloppy scholarship.

The other piece of supposedly “correlational data” is an oldGrocery Headquarters article from 2007 that quotes both Grimmway and Boskovich – but says nothing about sales. The article is behind a pay wall, blocking free access to the web page, but here are the relevant quotes:

Phil Gruszka, vice president of marketing at Bakersfield, Calif.-based Grimmway Farms, says his company’s alliance with SpongeBob Square Pants has been a learning experience. “There’s an opportunity for children to eat healthier today, and carrots play an important part in this. Kids are naturally attracted to baby carrots, both for their taste as well as their size, which makes it an ideal snack for lunch boxes. However, as we looked into it, we discovered not enough kids were including healthy snacks in their lives, so developing a relationship with the folks at Nickelodeon was a logical next step for us.”

Parents, Gruszka adds, have greeted the program with much enthusiasm. “They are happy that their kids are motivated to eat more produce and are especially relieved that they don’t have to negotiate food choices with their kids,” he says. “Retailers were looking for a program like this and are actively seeking ways to address childhood nutrition issues. They are amazed to see the influence a licensed character like SpongeBob has on kids who are literally begging their parents to buy our carrots because they recognize the character on the packaging.”

Oxnard, Calif.-based Boskovich Farms is leveraging SpongeBob’s popularity through its line of spinach products. “Many Americans do not consume the suggested number of servings of fresh produce, but it is even more important for today’s growing youth, many of whom are affected by childhood obesity,” says Lindsay Martinez, director of marketing. “Spinach is one of those super-vegetables which has so many nutrients and health benefits. It is low in calories and a good source of vitamins A and C, iron, folate and fiber. We felt that produce could be more kid-friendly when marketed with a character such as SpongeBob SquarePants.”

To help get its healthy message across, Grimmway trademarked the phrase “Carrots, the Kid-Friendly Vegetable” and lists carrots’ nutritional benefits on its packaging. The company features holiday-themed packaging several times a year. Gruszka says that has become another way for retailers to create excitement in the produce aisle, have a fresh new look and build eye-catching displays. The program is supported in-store with a variety of POS collateral.

A NUDGE TOWARD SPINACH

Though spinach is not traditionally a kid-friendly item, Boskovich’s Martinez says SpongeBob Spinach gives parents a needed nudge in getting kids to at least try the vegetable. “Our package graphics are specifically targeted to appeal to kids and busy families. Bags offer a microwave-in-bag option, kid-friendly recipes and ‘Nicktrition’ suggestions for healthy lifestyles,” she says. Boskovich Farms backs its program with signage, contests, interactive Web tie-ins and in-store demos featuring SpongeBob character “meet and greets” and in-pack giveaways of temporary tattoos.

It is impossible to read those paragraphs and claim that they provide “correlational data” supporting the thesis that the appearance of cartoon characters coincided with an increase in sales. Not to mention that the pieces are from three- to five-years ago and that a mere glance at the two company’s web sites would indicate that these two companies, whether they own any licenses or not, are certainly not promoting any of these lines.

Whatever happened to scholarship? Whatever happened to Yale?

There are tidbits of interest. The researchers claim the preference for cartoon characters on product was less dramatic in produce than with graham crackers or gummy fruit snacks. This might be due to familiarity, as more processed products are sold with cartoon tie-ins, or it might be that beautiful orange color of carrots is an independent appeal. We just don’t know.

Our anecdotal experience with the Jr. Pundits is that they do like cartoon characters and will often insist that we buy them. We often do – once. But our experience is that, though cartoon characters may make eating foods children already like to eat a little more fun — and so they look for the Shrek Yogurt in the fridge, for example — the impact of cartoon characters does not magically transform their preferences. And although in the store they may see a character on the spinach and cry for it, they will, in fact, not eat spinach if they don’t like it, just because of the character on the bag so the spinach will go to waste.

The “study” is really a hack job to promote a particular policy outcome. The researchers take these 40 kids and leap to a conclusion that literally has nothing to do with the research. The researchers proclaim a policy outcome that could not be drawn from the research no matter what the results. The researchers proclaim: “These findings suggest that the use of licensed characters to advertise junk food to children should be restricted.”

Where does one begin? First, the study did not deal with advertising at all. It provides no information as to whether advertising has any effect. It dealt solely with packaging.

Second, the study was between identical product, with and without characters on the packaging. The study didn’t show… couldn’t show… that characters make kids prefer junk food over the healthy food they would prefer without characters.

To do that, the researchers would have had to do a study with both, say, cookies and, say, collard greens. They would have to identify what percentage of children selected the cookies vs. the collard greens and then show that putting the characters on the cookies boosted that preference.

This “study” seems to be more interested in asserting unsupported policy solutions than in providing useful research and scholarship.