Healthy Food & Healthy Living by Dr. Ayala

Does Instagram make kids overeat?

Can you imagine photography-free dining? It isn’t easy. I’d bet that the food-photo to phone-call ratio on many teens’ smartphones favors food images. Food dominates much of social media; we are fed with food images as often as mama bird shares real food with her newly hatched chicks.

And while so many of us document our meals and snacks for a multitude of unclear reasons, there are professionals making a living off their stylized, gorgeous photos. Food manufactures and brands seek influencers with engaging content in order to reach their fanbase. Products are integrated into the feed of influencers in a way that makes it hard to discern that’s marketing and what’s content.

It’s already established that ads on TV and other traditional media affect kids’ food choices, and play a part in the obesity epidemic.

Instagram marketing may have just the same effect.

First with your eyes, then with your mouth

A new study in Pediatrics examined the effect of Instagram influencer marketing. 178 British kids, aged 9-11 years were randomly assigned to one of three influencer-marketing conditions: healthy food images, unhealthy food images, or non-food images as the control.

The influencers were a 26-year-old female video blogger and a 23 year-old male YouTube video blogger with millions of followers and subscribers. Each child was exposed to both the male and the female influencer, and was shown mock, photo-edited images that looked like a real Instagram feed with 6 images, 3 test ones, and 3 fillers. Test images had the celebrity holding an unhealthy snack – cookies – or healthy snacks – a banana – or a branded control that isn’t food – sneakers.

After looking at the images the kids were treated to snacks. They could choose from jelly candy, chocolate buttons, carrots or grapes, and eat as much as they wanted.

Exposure to marketing affected the kids’ immediate intake:

Kids shown the unhealthy Instagram feed consumed 26 percent more calories overall than those shown no food, and 15 percent more than those shown healthy foods.

Kids shown the unhealthy Instagram feed consumed 32 percent more calories from unhealthy snacks than those shown no food (control), and 20 percent more than those shown healthy foods.

Could Instagram make you overeat?

I think that nobody will be surprised to learn that marketing a product increases its sales – why else would brands invest money in it?

But another growing concern is just the sheer abundance of junk food offline and online, because junk food marketing, we’re learning, not only lifts the sales of the advertised brand: it has an overall effect of making us eat more.

Junk food abundance, both in real life – offered wherever kids go, sold in every corner, vended from machines placed strategically – and in images, may be central to our obesogenic environment.

It turns out that just having appetizing food around, even in a picture, might push kids to eat just a little bit more. And years of just an extra half cookie can be enough to launch a kid into overweight or obesity.

As kids shift their media consumption towards mobile and social media it’s imperative that we learn how new technologies and content impact their habits and health.

Dr. Ayala

The food ads that teens make

Millennials are both credited and accused of being obsessed with food. The younger generation is recognized as a driver of healthy eating trends, as the generation that photographs its food until it’s cold, that spends its discretionary money on eating out, and one that admires celebrity chefs.

Social media is where this preoccupation manifests most vividly.

A new study led by Christopher Holmberg in the journal Appetite set out to see what kinds of foods teens share with their friends. The Swedish research team picked Instagram because of its popularity.

A sample of more than 1000 Instagram accounts belonging to teens aged 14 year-old was analyzed.

High calorie low nutrient foods dominate

Food photos were found in about 85 percent of teen accounts, and food was the central feature in 96 percent of these uploaded images (it was placed in the center of the photo, and featured in the description).

The most common foods were cookies and pastry (20 percent of images), soda and lemonade came second (18 percent), followed by chocolate (16 percent), ice cream (11 percent), and candy (11 percent). Fruits occupied 9 percent of images, as did veggies. Overall, two thirds of food photos were of food the researchers categorize as high calorie low nutrient food.

Almost 40 percent of food images prominently displayed a brand name – much like an ad. Food brands that received lots of images were sodas, with Coca Cola in the lead, followed by Ben and Jerry’s and Starbucks.

Teens promote sugary drinks to their friends

The authors note that many of the photos that contained brands mimicked the existing ads the brands themselves produce.

It might be that teens agree with the brands, or, perhaps more likely, that they’re not aware that they’re participating in what becomes an ad. As mentioned above, several brands received a lot of uploads, and this was not by chance, the researchers found out: Many of these uploads were in response to campaigns such as Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke”; Starbucks and Ben and Jerry’s had similar hashtag related campaigns.

The authors suggest that food photos are part of the teen's identity profile on Instagram. Association with food brands plays this role, but then, so does sharing a photo depicting healthy foods such as freshly picked berries

According to a recent report from the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy kids are seeing more unhealthy snack ads than ever before as food brands increased their ad spend on TV and on social media. The report says that companies are moving to newer forms of digital marketing: “As social media sites enlist teens to market unhealthy products virally to their friends this form of marketing raises additional concerns among health experts.”

Social media spreads ideas, behaviors and habits. Brands are already paying attention and capitalizing on the word-of-mouth or, more accurately, the selfies, emojis and hashtags by teens as brand ambassadors.

Not all food is equally photogenic, but fruits, veggies, and many other plant-based ingredients and preparations of healthy foods certainly are – and they need all the free advertising they can get.

Dr. Ayala