Children influence grocery purchases

A simple grocery list of necessities, some caregivers find, has the potential to undergo drastic changes as children point to and threaten to throw tantrums about attractively advertised sweets. For caregivers who do not have the luxury of leaving their children at home while shopping for groceries, the easier option is to give in to demands for junk food instead of battling their children over sugary trifles.

A new study by researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), recently published in the October issue of the journal Appetite, explored children’s role in the outcome of the grocery bill as well as the effect of the store’s environment on children’s preferences. This qualitative study sought to glean insights through interviews with shoppers at a selected store.

Save for the store manager, the 62 interviewees shopped at the store, looked after at least one child under 16 years old and identified themselves as the primary shoppers of their respective households. The study participants, primarily African American women, hailed from surrounding low-income neighborhoods situated around the store, an area where over a quarter of families earn less than the Federal Poverty Level.

When asked about the shopping experience with children in tow, interviewees remarked upon the difficulties of shopping with children, whose demands for junk food imposed an additional burden on their limited grocery budgets. Several participants remarked on how their children’s clamors for unhealthy foods limited funds for purchases of necessities and healthier alternatives. Although caregivers described having to utilize various strategies to counter the pleas for junk food, such as outright refusal, healthier suggestions or covert misplacement of the desired object, they admitted to having to give in to at least some of the demands.

One mother, quoted in the published study, delineated how challenging grocery shopping can become when her kids were all trying to grab what they wanted to eat and not paying attention to her. Another participant mentioned that anything colorful seemed to grab children’s attentions.

Moreover, study participants remarked upon the arrangement of products in the supermarket that seemed to exacerbate unhealthy food purchasing initiated by their children. The interviewees described how junk food products were shelved so as to seemingly accommodate children’s height and reach. Another common concern was the placement of unhealthy foods at the front entrance and the checkout area, two unavoidable locations.

The store manager, in the interview as published in the study article, admitted to have catered to the customers’ preferences for less healthy foods based on sales, though he indicated willingness to increase the availability of healthier products, depending on popular demand.

When asked to suggest improvements about the grocery shopping experience, study participants commonly proposed placing the healthier options in more visible locations and removing the junk food from children’s reach. Several interviewees asserted the need to distract children through activities that would promote healthy products, such as providing healthy food sampling for the younger kids or cooking lessons for the older children.

As barring children from grocery shopping is not a viable or realistic option, the promotion of healthy eating among children has been pinpointed as the best strategy to improve kids’ diets. Although caregivers, as shown in this qualitative study, demonstrated a desire to make healthy purchases, the limitations of the grocery budget and children’s persistent clamors for junk food presented serious challenges.

This qualitative study was focused on only one specific supermarket, so replication for supermarkets similarly situated in low income neighborhoods could offer further validation of the results. Nevertheless, the study’s results stress the magnitude of children’s influence on unhealthy food purchases and the need to actively encourage healthy eating.