Jennifer L Harris

Jennifer L Harris
University of Connecticut | UConn · Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health

About

137
Publications
41,081
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
6,751
Citations

Publications

Publications (137)
Chapter
Full-text available
Unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children, including adolescents, leads to diet-related negative health outcomes. In recent years, food brands have pioneered highly engaging, rewarding, and targeted digital marketing techniques with enormous youth appeal to reach children online. As with traditional TV advertising, digital marketing primari...
Article
Importance Reducing children’s exposure to advertisements promoting unhealthy foods and beverages has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a key strategy to improve children’s diets and reduce childhood obesity. Objective To examine changes in children’s exposure to food-related (food, beverage, and restaurant) television advertisin...
Article
Full-text available
Responsive feeding (RF), the reciprocal feeding approach between caregiver and child that promotes child health, is understudied among low-income caregivers. This mixed methods study with low-income caregivers of 12-to-36-month-olds aimed to (1) assess variability in RF and associations with children’s dietary intake, and (2) explore caregivers’ pe...
Article
Fifteen years ago, public health experts urged industry, governments, and advocates to take action to dramatically improve the unhealthy food-marketing environment surrounding children in order to address the global childhood obesity crisis. Since then, research has confirmed that food marketing to children has far-reaching negative effects on thei...
Article
Full-text available
Objective:Test effects of a standardised front-of-package (FOP) disclosure statement (indicating added sugar, non-nutritive sweetener (NNS) and juice content) on accuracy in assessing ingredients and perceived healthfulness of children’s drinks. Design:In two randomised controlled experiments, the same participants viewed drink packages and indicat...
Article
Full-text available
Background Through the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), U.S. food companies pledge to only advertise healthier products in children’s television (TV) programming, but previous research shows that highly advertised products do not qualify as nutritious according to independent nutrition criteria. In 2020, the CFBAI implem...
Article
Background Exposure to food advertisements is a major driver of childhood obesity, and food companies disproportionately target Latinx youth with their least healthy products. This study assessed the effects of food and beverage advertisements featuring Latinx celebrities versus Latinx noncelebrities on Latinx and White adolescents. Objective This...
Article
Snacks are inconsistently defined in nutrition research and dietary guidelines for young children, challenging efforts to improve diet quality. Although some guidelines suggest that snacks include at least two food groups and fit into an overall health promoting dietary pattern, snacks high in added sugars and sodium are highly marketed and frequen...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Despite expert recommendations, most toddlers consume sugary drinks and more sweet and salty snack foods than fruits and vegetables as snacks. Studies have examined toddler caregivers' reasons for providing sugary drinks, but few have examined the reasons for providing nutritionally poor snack foods. Methods: Researchers conducted fo...
Article
Full-text available
Background Child health experts raise numerous concerns about the negative effects of children's exposure to unhealthy digital food marketing, including advertising and branded product placements on child‐oriented videos. Objectives YouTube banned food advertising on “made‐for‐kids” channels in 2020, but research is needed to assess food‐related a...
Article
Objectives. To test the effects of countermarketing videos addressing common misperceptions about ingredients and claims on children’s sugary drinks. Methods. We conducted an online randomized controlled experiment in January 2021 with US caregivers (n = 600) of young children (aged 8‒37 months) to assess the effects of watching countermarketing ve...
Article
Full-text available
Background Through the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), major food companies in the US pledge to only advertise products that meet CFBAI nutrition criteria in child-directed media. In 2020, the CFBAI implemented revised nutrition criteria to align with US dietary guidelines and federal Nutrition Facts label changes. The...
Article
Full-text available
Background Formula brands have modified the ingredients in standard infant formulas and extensively market modified formulas, claiming benefits for infants that are not supported by scientific evidence. This exploratory study examined the proportion of infant caregivers who reported serving modified formula, demographic differences, and reasons for...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: Drinks containing added sugar and/or non-nutritive sweeteners are not recommended for children under 6 years. Yet, most young children consume these products. The current study examined factors associated with caregivers' provision of sweetened drinks to their young child. Design: Caregivers reported frequency of providing sweetened f...
Research
Full-text available
In the US, 19 food and beverage companies have voluntarily pledged to limit unhealthy food advertising to children through an industry self-regulatory program called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI). In 2018, CFBAI announced revised nutrition criteria that were put in place in January 2020. CFBAI regularly publishes a...
Article
Full-text available
Despite expert recommendations, US parents often serve sugar-sweetened children's drinks, including sweetened fruit-flavoured drinks and toddler milks, to young children. This qualitative research explored parents' understanding of common marketing tactics used to promote these drinks and whether they mislead parents to believe the drinks are healt...
Article
Full-text available
Background Against expert recommendations, sugar-sweetened beverages, especially fruit drinks, are consumed by young children. Misperceptions about drink ingredients and healthfulness may contribute to caregivers’ provision. Objective Assess caregivers’ reasons for serving sweetened fruit-flavored drinks and unsweetened juices to their young child...
Article
Public health experts raise concerns that extensive exposure to advertising for calorie-dense nutrient-poor food negatively influences adolescents' diets, but few studies have explored how food advertising affects children over age 12. This study examines adolescents' attitudes about highly targeted unhealthy food brands and assesses the hierarchic...
Article
Introduction Sugar-sweetened beverages contribute a large proportion of added sugar in young children's diets; yet, companies market sugar-sweetened children's drinks extensively to children and parents. This study examines the changes in children's drink purchases by U.S. households with young children and the associations with marketing practices...
Article
Full-text available
Resumen El entorno alimentario es un factor importante que contribuye a las dietas poco saludables en la niñez y, por tanto, a las crecientes tasas de obesidad. Los países de Latinoamérica han recibido el reconocimiento internacional por su liderazgo en la implementación de políticas dirigidas a distintos aspectos del entorno alimentario. Sin embar...
Article
Full-text available
Objective To evaluate messages about infant feeding on breastmilk substitute (BMS) manufacturer websites directed at US caregivers and compare information and portrayals of breast-feeding/breastmilk with that of infant formula (IF) feeding. Design We conducted a content analysis of US BMS companies’ websites. A codebook was created through an iter...
Article
Objective Assess milk type provision (commercially prepared infant and toddler formula, cow's milk, and plant milk) to infants and toddlers, accounting for sociodemographic characteristics and marketing claims. Participants Caregivers (N = 1,645) of children (aged 6–36 months) recruited through online panels in 2017. Methods Cross-sectional surve...
Article
Background Toddler milk (i.e., a nutrient-fortified milk-based drink marketed for children ages 12-36 months) has been increasingly marketed in the United States with structure/function claims on product packaging that are potentially misleading. Objective This study examined how structure/function claims impact parents’ beliefs and perceptions ab...
Article
Full-text available
The food environment is a major contributor to unhealthy diets in children and, therefore, to the increasing rates of obesity. Acclaimed by scholars across the world, Latin American countries have been leaders in implementing policies that target different aspects of the food environment. Evidence on the nature and to what extent children are expos...
Article
Full-text available
Background Children's fast‐food consumption increases risks for obesity and other diet‐related diseases. To address concerns, from 2010 to 2016 U.S. fast‐food restaurants implemented voluntary policies to offer healthier drinks and/or sides with kids' meals. Objectives Examine the effectiveness of voluntary kids' meal policies. Methods Online rep...
Article
Full-text available
Background Experts recommend against serving sugary drinks and non‐nutritive sweeteners to young children, but misperceptions about drink ingredients may contribute to consumption. Objectives Assess parents' ability to identify added sugar, non‐nutritive sweeteners and juice in children's drinks. Methods Researchers recruited U.S. parents of youn...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose of Review Examine current research on how adolescents are influenced by junk food marketing; inform proposed policies to expand food marketing restrictions to protect children up to age 17. Recent Findings Previous food marketing effects research focused primarily on TV advertising to younger children. However, recent research with adolesc...
Article
Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) contribute to childhood obesity, long-term risks for diet-related diseases, and health disparities affecting communities of color. Hispanic children are disproportionately affected by obesity, but research is needed to better understand culturally specific reasons for providing SSBs to Hispanic children. This explor...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives Toddler milk (i.e., a nutrient-fortified milk-based drink marketed for children 12-36 months old) is increasingly being marketed in the US despite not being recommended for young children. There is evidence of targeted toddler milk marketing to Latinos in the US. This study aimed to explore toddler milk perceptions and behaviors among La...
Article
Full-text available
Marketing of toddler milk (i.e., typically sugar-sweetened nutrient-fortified milk-based drinks marketed for children 12–36 months) is an emerging public health problem in the US. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against the consumption of toddler milk because it often contains added sugar and can displace nutrient-dense foods. Studies...
Article
Full-text available
The United States (US) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides free infant formula to low-income families with infants. State WIC agencies periodically solicit bids from manufacturers for the exclusive contract to provide infant formula in exchange for considerable rebates. Using Nielsen 2006–2015 reta...
Article
Food marketing is a major contributor to high rates of obesity and diet-related disease among children. Researchers, advocates, and policymakers have called for improvements in the nutrition quality of foods marketed to children to improve children's health. In the United States, for over 10 years, the food and beverage industry has responded with...
Article
Objective Children are surrounded by ubiquitous forms of unhealthy food marketing at home and in schools. The US Department of Agriculture now restricts food and beverage marketing that does not meet Smart Snacks in School standards. School superintendents, as districts’ top administrators, play a critical role in ensuring marketing policies are im...
Article
Objectives. To compare children’s drink products that contain or purport to contain juice and evaluate labels in light of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. Methods. In 2019, we analyzed federal law for drinks that contain or purport to contain juice by using LexisNexis and FDA’s Web site, identified top-selling children’s “juice” d...
Article
Full-text available
The World Health Organization International Code of Marketing of Breast‐milk Substitutes prohibits claims and other marketing that may confuse caregivers about benefits of formula and other milk‐based drinks for infants and toddlers, but such marketing is common in the United States. This study assessed caregivers' provision of milk‐based products...
Article
Full-text available
Public health experts worldwide are calling for a reduction of the marketing of nutrient-poor food and beverages to children. However, industry self-regulation and most government policies do not address in-store marketing, including shelf placement and retail promotions. This paper reports two U.S.-based studies examining the prevalence and potent...
Article
Objective Extensive marketing of ‘toddler milks’ (sugar-sweetened milk-based drinks for toddlers) promotes unsubstantiated product benefits and raises concerns about consumption by young children. The present study documents trends in US toddler milk sales and assesses relationships with brand and category marketing. Design We report annual US tod...
Article
Children's diets in their first 1000 days influence dietary preferences, eating habits, and long-term health. Yet the diets of most infants and toddlers in the United States do not conform to recommendations for optimal child nutrition. This narrative review examines whether marketing for infant formula and other commercial baby/toddler foods plays...
Article
Background: Food advertising is a major contributor to obesity, and fast food (FF) restaurants are top advertisers. Research on the impact of food advertising in adolescents is lacking and no prior research has investigated neural predictors of food intake in adolescents. Neural systems implicated in reward could be key to understanding how food a...
Article
Introduction: Food-related promotion of brands via social media represents an increasingly important youth-targeted marketing strategy, but little is known about how adolescents interact with these brands online. This study measures adolescents' social media engagement with food/beverage brands, sociodemographic differences in level of engagement,...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives: To assess low-income parents' understanding and conformity with expert guidance on feeding young toddlers and identify targeted messages to address gaps. Methods: Survey of parents of toddlers (12-36 months) living in a low-income urban city to assess foods/beverages served in the previous week; responsive feeding practices; attitude...
Article
Introduction: Fast food (FF) advertising is a potential risk factor for FF consumption among children, yet the impact of such advertising on children's FF intake has not been assessed in a longitudinal, naturalistic study. Whether parents' FF consumption mitigates advertising effects is also unknown. Methods: One-year, longitudinal study among 6...
Article
Food marketing targeted to Black and Latino adolescents primarily promotes energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods and likely contributes to diet-related health disparities. Targeted marketing raises further public health concerns as Black and Latino youth are also exposed to greater amounts of unhealthy food marketing in the media and their communities....
Article
Foods and beverages marketed for infants, babies, and toddlers through 3 years of age is a $7 billion industry in the United States, incorporating a wide range of products, including infant formula and other types of drinks, foods, and snacks. The World Health Organization (“WHO”) found that mothers “are often inundated with incorrect and biased in...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Child-directed TV advertising is believed to influence children's diets, yet prospective studies in naturalistic settings are absent. This study examined if child-directed TV advertisement exposure for ten brands of high-sugar breakfast cereals was associated with children's intake of those brands prospectively. Methods: Observatio...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose: Examine parents' support for policies to reduce unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children and adolescents and identify racial, ethnic, and other sociodemographic characteristics that predict support. Methods: Online survey of U.S. parents (N=3356) with children 2–17 years of age conducted annually (2009–2012). Participants provided...
Article
Background A previous report found that toddler formula brands (fortified milks for children 1–3 years old) spent almost $17 million in adverting in 2015, an increase of 74% compared with 2011. Pediatric nutrition experts specifically recommend against serving these products due to lack of scientific evidence of advantage over whole milk and recomm...
Article
The Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) encourages stakeholders to implement a sugar sweetened beverage excise tax. Sugar sweetened beverages are the largest source of added sugars in the USA and have detrimental effects on population health by increasing risks for chronic diseases. Based on existing research evidence, SBM supports an excise tax e...
Article
Objective To examine the nutritional quality of menu items promoted in four (US) fast-food restaurant chains (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell) in 2010 and 2013. Design Menu items pictured on signs and menu boards were recorded at 400 fast-food restaurants across the USA. The Nutrient Profile Index (NPI) was used to calculate overall nu...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Food and nonalcoholic beverage companies spend millions of dollars on professional sports sponsorships, yet this form of marketing is understudied. These sponsorships are valuable marketing tools but prompt concerns when unhealthy products are associated with popular sports organizations, especially those viewed by youth. Methods: Th...
Article
Toddler drinks are a growing category of drinks marketed for young children 9–36 months old. Medical experts do not recommend them, and public health experts raise concerns about misleading labeling practices. In the U.S., the toddler drink category includes two types of products: transition formulas, marketed for infants and toddlers 9–24 months;...
Article
Children of all ages are vulnerable to influence from exposure to unhealthy food advertisements, but experts raise additional concerns about children under 6 due to their more limited cognitive abilities. Most companies in the U.S. Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) industry self-regulatory program pledge to not direct any...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Unhealthy food marketing to children remains a major public health concern. In response to calls for food companies to reform their child directed marketing practices and promote products that support healthy eating, the Council of Better Business Bureaus launched the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) in 2007 to “shift the...
Article
Background: Food companies often use healthy lifestyle messages in child-directed advertising, raising public health concerns about health halo effects for nutrient-poor food/drinks. Objective: Examine effects of health messages promoting nutrient-poor foods in child-directed advertising. Methods: Randomized controlled experiment (N = 138). Ch...
Article
Full-text available
Food and beverage marketing has been identified as a major driver of obesity yet sports sponsorship remains common practice and represents millions of dollars in advertising expenditures. Research shows that food and beverage products associated with sports (e.g., M&M's with National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing logo) generate positive fee...
Article
Objective: To assess relationships between mothers' feeding practices (food as a reward, food for emotion regulation, modelling of healthy eating) and mothers' willingness to purchase child-marketed foods and fruits/vegetables (F&V) requested by their children during grocery co-shopping. Design: Cross-sectional. Mothers completed an online surve...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose: To measure disparities in exposure to food/beverage websites by Hispanic youth. Methods: Observational study using market research panel data compared frequency and time spent visiting food/beverage websites and the Internet overall for Hispanic and non-Hispanic children (6–11 years) and youth (6–17 years). Results: Hispanic children and y...
Article
Objective To determine whether exposure to child-targeted fast-food (FF) television (TV) advertising is associated with children’s FF intake in a non-experimental setting. Design Cross-sectional survey conducted April–December 2013. Parents reported their pre-school child’s TV viewing time, channels watched and past-week FF consumption. Responses...
Article
Regulation of food marketing to children: are statutory or industry self-governed systems effective? - Volume 20 Issue 5 - Emma J Boyland, Jennifer L Harris
Article
Importance: Data are needed to evaluate community interventions to reduce consumption of sugary drinks. Supermarket sales data can be used for this purpose. Objective: To compare beverage sales in Howard County, Maryland (HC), with sales in comparison stores in a contiguous state before and during a 3-year campaign to reduce consumption of sugar...
Article
Background: Public health experts raise concerns about adolescents' and black youth's greater exposure to TV advertising for unhealthy foods and beverages compared with children and white youth. Objectives: Examine how television-viewing patterns and rates of advertising during targeted programming contribute to this greater exposure. Methods:...
Article
Breakfast cereals represent the most highly advertised packaged food on child-targeted television, and most ads are for cereals high in sugar. This study examined whether children's TV exposure to child-targeted, high-sugar breakfast cereal (SBC) ads was associated with their consumption of those SBC brands. Parents of 3- to 5-year-old children wer...
Article
Background: In 2014, USDA established nutrition standards for snack foods sold in schools. Many manufacturers reformulated products to meet these Smart Snacks standards, but continue to advertise unhealthy versions of the same brands. Furthermore, Smart Snack packaging often looks similar to less nutritious versions sold outside of schools (look-a...
Article
Full-text available
Background Evidence supports that television food advertisements influence children’s food preferences and their consumption. However, few studies have examined the extent and nature of food marketing to children in low and middle income countries. This study aims to assess the nutritional quality of foods and beverages advertised on Mexican TV, ap...
Article
Nutrition information and front-of-pack labelling: issues in effectiveness - Volume 19 Issue 12 - Sophie Hieke, Jennifer L. Harris
Article
Full-text available
Implicit processes refer to cognitive, affective, and motivational processes that influence health decisions and behavior without the person intending that influence. This special issue aims to increase appreciation of the diverse and promising research on implicit processes in health psychology, and to promote discussion about how this research im...
Article
Objective: Public health experts raise concerns about marketing unhealthy products to young people through television (TV) product placements. Coca-Cola brand appearances (product placements) reached a substantial child and adolescent audience in 2008, but additional brands now sponsor popular programming. We aimed to quantify child and adolescent...
Article
Public health interventions must address poor diet among U.S. children, but research is needed to better understand factors influencing children's food choices. Using an online grocery store simulation, this research piloted a novel method to assess children's snack selection in a controlled but naturalistic laboratory setting, evaluate predictors...
Article
Candy advertising illustrates limitations of the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) self-regulatory program to improve food marketing to children. Participating companies pledge to not advertise candy in child-directed media. Yet independent analyses show that children viewed 65% more candy ads on U.S. television in 2011 th...
Article
Addressing concerns about unhealthy food marketing to children, food companies pledge to advertise only ‘healthier dietary choices’ in ‘child-directed media’. However, public health advocates question whether the food industry will voluntarily improve their child-targeted marketing practices in a meaningful way. In this paper, we evaluate progress...
Article
Concerns about potential dangers from energy drink consumption by youth have been raised by health experts, whereas energy drink manufacturers claim these products are safe and suitable for marketing to teens. This review summarizes the evidence used to support both sides of the debate. Unlike most beverage categories, sales of energy drinks and ot...
Article
Objective: To assess potential misperceptions among parents regarding the healthfulness of sugary drinks for their children. Design: Online survey of parents. Participants identified the categories and specific brands of sugary drinks they provided for their children. They also indicated their perceptions of sugary drink categories and brands as...
Conference Paper
Introduction: While local communities launch initiatives to discourage sugary drink consumption, beverage companies spend over $500 million annually in marketing directed to children and teens encouraging greater consumption. Much of this marketing occurs outside of traditional media, including social, mobile and in-school marketing and local commu...
Article
Objective Adolescents view thousands of food commercials annually, but little is known about how individual differences in neural response to food commercials relate to weight gain. To add to our understanding of individual risk factors for unhealthy weight gain and environmental contributions to the obesity epidemic, we tested the associations bet...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The Institute of Medicine noted that current food and beverage marketing practices promote unhealthful diets. However, little public health research has been conducted on food marketing directed toward adolescents, especially using caregiver- and adolescent-reported data. Methods: We assessed perceived frequency of food/beverage adve...
Article
Children and adolescents in the United States consume too many calories, including empty calories from foods and beverages high in sugar and saturated fat, placing them at risk for obesity and obesity-related diseases including type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and cancer.1- 3 Yet food companies continue to directly target young people with m...
Article
Full-text available
Marketing that targets children with energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods is a likely contributor to the childhood obesity crisis. High-sugar ready-to-eat cereals are the packaged food most frequently promoted in child-targeted food advertising on television. The authors combined content analysis of product nutritional quality and messages presented i...
Article
Objective: This study quantified professional athletes' endorsement of food and beverages, evaluated the nutritional quality of endorsed products, and determined the number of television commercial exposures of athlete-endorsement commercials for children, adolescents, and adults. Methods: One hundred professional athletes were selected on the b...
Article
Full-text available
The unconscious mind tends to disregard negations in its processing of semantic meaning. Therefore, messages containing negated concepts can ironically prime mental representations and evaluations that are opposite to those intended. We hypothesized that the subtle presentation of a negated concept (e.g., “no smoking”) would activate ironic motivat...
Article
In response to concerns about childhood obesity, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released two reports documenting food and beverage marketing expenditures to children and adolescents. The recently released 2012 report found an inflation-adjusted 19.5% reduction in marketing expenditures targeted to youth from $2.1 billion in 2006 to $1.8 billion...
Article
Background: Food marketing contributes to childhood obesity. Food companies commonly place display advertising on children's web sites, but few studies have investigated this form of advertising. Objectives: Document the number of food and beverage display advertisements viewed on popular children's web sites, nutritional quality of advertised b...
Article
Importance: Exposure to large numbers of television advertisements for foods and beverages with little or no nutritional value likely contributes to poor diet among youth. Given higher rates of obesity and overweight for Hispanic youth, it is important to understand the amount and types of food advertising they view. Objective: To quantify the a...