Photo Shutterstock Floor van Meer, a Data Science researcher at Wageningen Food Safety Research, studied MRI scans of children’s brains – and of their parent of the same sex – to see how they responded to pictures of unhealthy food. ‘Children who are overweight turned out to be twice as vulnerable’.
Every day, we face temptations to eat unhealthy food. That applies to children too. However, the part of the human brain that is responsible for self-control – weighing up options and making choices – doesn’t finish developing until you are in your thirties. Van Meer wondered if children are really in a position to resist all those unhealthy temptations. And does being overweight make any difference?
For her study (which she started at the university hospital in Utrecht but completed in Wageningen) she used brain scans of children aged 10 to 17 and of their parent (aged 30 to 67) of the same sex. The participants were shown pictures of food products on a screen while an MRI scanner recorded which part of the brain was active. As a way of making sure they concentrated on the products, they were told beforehand that they would need to point out afterwards which products they had seen.
Doubly unfair
Van Meer compared the brain responses on seeing healthy food versus seeing unhealthy food. She also took into consideration the body mass index (BMI, a relationship between weight and height) and the participants’ age. ‘The brain activity measurements show it is harder for children to make healthy choices than it is for adults.’ The part of the brain that is associated with self-control – and which lights up when adults are exposed to pictures of unhealthy food – showed much less of a response in the children. Even the older children had a different response to the adults. ‘Although the law considers them to be almost adults, this study showed they had less self-control than the adults.’
Children with a high BMI, in other words who are overweight, were even more sensitive to the unhealthy foods than children with a normal BMI, as they had less activation in the areas of the brain associated with self-control. Van Meer did not find this BMI effect in adults. ‘It is possible that children who have less self-control tend to eat more and therefore have a higher BMI,’ says Van Meer. ‘But it could be the reverse: the fact that they are heavier may affect their brain and make them more sensitive to food-related stimuli. Regardless, it means that children who are overweight may find it harder to resist temptations than children with a healthy weight, who in turn find it harder than adults. That is doubly unfair.’
Policy
The next step is for policymakers and politicians to do something about it, sighs Van Meer. ‘The practice of showing Dora, Spiderman or other characters popular with children on packaging for children’s cookies was banned some years ago, but in my opinion the legislation on marketing unhealthy food should be tightened up further. And enforced. I don’t want to forbid children ever to eat unhealthy food, but we could make it less tempting.’
