"If we're trying to promote healthier foods, we need to be as smart as the companies that are selling the less-healthy foods," said David Just, co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioural Economics in Child Nutrition Program, who worked on the study.
Noting that cartoon characters and flashy advertising often don cookie and candy packaging, he added, "The message should be: Fight fire with fire."
Just and his colleagues offered cookies and apples to 208 eight-to 11-year-olds at suburban and rural schools every day at lunch for a week. Children were allowed to choose an apple, a cookie or both, along with their normal meal.
Some days, the snacks were offered without cartoon stickers or other branding. On other days, either the cookie or the apple was branded with a familiar cartoon character.
When the snacks weren't specially marked, 91 per cent of children took a cookie and just under onequarter took an apple. But when an Elmo sticker was slapped on the apples, 37 per cent of children took fruit, the researchers reported.
