Pre-exposure to food temptation reduces subsequent consumption: A test of the procedure with a South-African sample.

It has been suggested that the consumption of unhealthy Westernized diet in a context of poverty and resultant food insecurity may have contributed to South-Africa's status of the third fattest country in the World. Considering that a number of South-Africans are reported to have experienced, or are still experiencing food insecurity, procedures which have been shown to reduce the consumption of unhealthy food in higher income countries may be ineffective in South-Africa. We thus tested the robustness of the so called pre-exposure procedure in South-Africa.

Towards a behavioral vaccine: exposure to accessible temptation when self-regulation is endorsed enhances future resistance to similar temptations in children.

Background: Access to temptation is blamed for the rising prevalence of obesity in children. A popular way to counter this is to restrict physical access to temptation. As restrictions cannot be widely applied and may have adverse long-term effects, we examine whether accessible temptations in situations that endorse self-regulation train self-regulation.

Temptation in the background: non-consummatory exposure to food temptation enhances self-regulation in boys but not in girls.

The abundance of calorie-dense low-nutrient food in everyday life raises the question as to how children deal with such opportunities. We investigate whether pre-exposure to the object of temptation in a situation that discourages consumption boosts children's ability to resist similar temptation subsequently. We show that 7-12-year-old boys, but not girls, demonstrate increased resistance to a temptation after pre-exposure to a similar temptation.

The joint effect of tangible and non-tangible rewards on healthy food choices in children.

This study investigated how a combination of tangible and non-tangible rewards can alter health-related decisions made by children. Children chose between an unhealthy food option (a bowl of potato crisps) and a healthy food option (a bowl of grapes) on two occasions. In the first round, we manipulated the expected tangible reward and praise.