Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill want to know if graphic pictures (like the ones found on cigarette packages) deter parents from buying sugary drinks. The pictures are gruesome: a blackened foot, eaten up by type 2 diabetes, and a damaged heart, the ravages of heart disease.
As might be expected, graphic warnings reduced the purchase of sugary beverages by 17 percent.
The study was unique because researchers simulated a natural shopping environment by constructing a “mini-mart” in their lab at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. The sugary drinks study is one the first to use the mini-mart lab.
“We created this store because we saw a major need for research that tests the impact of policies in a food store setting that is much more realistic,” said Lindsey Smith Taillie, Ph.D., one the study authors. “When people make choices about what food to buy, they are juggling dozens of factors like taste, cost and advertising and are looking at many products at once.”
“Showing that warnings can cut through the noise of everything else that’s happening in a food store is powerful evidence that they would help reduce sugary drink purchases in the real world.”
Sugary drinks like soda and juice are linked to a host of health impacts: diabetes, cancer, obesity, cavities, heart disease…the list goes on.
Tragically, the highest consumers of sugary drinks are children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the 63 percent of children consume at least one sugary drink per day. The intake is highest among boys, especially Black youth, or youth in low-income families, partially because ads target these groups more than other.
Giving up sugary drinks isn’t easy. Research shows that sugar activates dopamine, the same reward system in the brain that drugs do, creating a sense of euphoria that one review suggested can be more powerful than cocaine.
The team brought 325 parents of children aged two to 12 and split them randomly into two groups. Both groups were asked to choose a snack and a drink for their kids. In one group, the sugary beverages all had the warning labels on them. The control group did not. Both groups were surveyed after “shopping” in the mini-mart.
In the group that wasn’t exposed to the warning labels and images, 45 percent of parents chose a sugary drink for their kids. The group of parents that saw the labels chose sugary drinks 28 percent of the time.
The results were reported in the journal PLOS magazine.
“We think the paper could be useful for policymakers in the U.S. and globally,” said Marissa Hall, lead study author. “This evidence supports strong front-of-package warnings to reduce children’s sugary drink consumption.”