In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that 3-year-old children at a pre-literacy age can correctly identify healthy and unhealthy foods if they are paired with emoticons to convey this information. Using a multiple baseline single case design, 6 boys were shown pairs of cards depicting one healthy and one unhealthy food, across many trials. Children were asked to point to the healthy food on half the trials and to point to the food that was not healthy on the other half of trials. On half the trials, the foods depicted were familiar to the child; on the other half of trials, the foods were not familiar. A happy face emoticon was displayed on all cards depicting a healthy food; a sad face emoticon was displayed on all cards depicting an unhealthy food. If a child did not score 100% on each trial in baseline, then he was given a lesson to teach him how to relate emoticons with health and tested again in a postbaseline phase. The results showed that four of six children scored 100% on this assessment in baseline. The two remaining children scored 100% in the post-baseline phase. These results show that pre-literacy-aged children can readily match concepts of health (healthy, not healthy) to emotional correlates of health (healthy-good, not healthy-not good). At present, these are the first results to show that literacy is not an absolute requirement for children to identify the healthfulness of foods, and could lead to possible early interventions that could be easily incorporated into a preschool curriculum for children as young as 3-years of age.

Background: While brain imaging studies show that reward regions in the human brain that regulate reward-guided behavior and integrate sensory modalities of smell, taste, and texture respond preferentially to high calorie foods, few studies account for dietary histories or account for recent behavioral evidence showing preferential responding for fruits (a low calorie food that tastes sweet). To address these concerns, the present study tested the hypothesis that images of high/low fat and sugar foods, even sugary foods that are low calorie (i.e., fruits), will enhance emotional responsiveness and that these changes may be related to dietary histories with fat and sugar intake. Method: Participants were shown 4 sets of 15 food images with each food image automatically timed every 9 s to transition to a new food image; participant pre-post mood and arousal was measured. The 4 sets of food images were high fat-high sugar (HFHS; desserts), high fat-low sugar (HFLS; fried foods), low fat-high sugar (LFHS; fruits), or low fat-low sugar (LFLS; vegetables) foods. To account for dietary histories, participants also completed estimated daily intake scales (EDIS) for sugar and fat. Results: Mood and arousal significantly increased in all groups, except Group LFLS, and even in a group that was low calorie but shown foods that taste sweet, i.e., Group LFHS. Interestingly, changes in arousal, but not mood, were dependent on participant histories with sugar and fat intake. Conclusion: Changes in emotional responsiveness to food images were nutrient-specific, which can be a more detailed level of analysis for assessing responsiveness to food images. Also, participant histories with sugar and fat should be taken into account as these histories can explain the changes in arousal observed here.