Parents’ mental associations with ultra-processed products for their infant children: insights to improve complementary feeding practices

Increasing consumption of ultra-processed products from early age has raised growing concerns. In this context, the aims of the present work were: i) to explore the automatic mental associations raised by packages of ultra-processed products among parents of children under 12 months of age, ii) to estimate the valence of the affective reactions elicited by ultra-processed products, and iii) to explore the influence of socio-demographic variables and feeding styles on the valence of parents’ associations with ultra-processed products. A total of 419 parents of children under 12 months of age were recruited at 20 health facilities that offer well-child services, selected using probability proportional to size sampling based on the number of births at each institution. Participants were presented with the labels of six ultra-processed products (corn snack, frankfurters, milk dessert, orange juice, wafer cookies, yogurt) and were asked to indicate the first words that came to their mind. The products raised mixed mental associations, which were mainly related to pleasure and health. Responses from the majority of participants (61–82%) evidenced negative associations with corn snacks, frankfurters and wafer cookies, whereas responses from 35 to 45% of the participants suggested a positive affective reaction towards orange juice, milk dessert and yogurt. Likelihood of having a positive affective reaction towards the evaluated ultra-processed products was higher for parents of 1 to 4 months infants, as well as those from low educational level and low socio-economic status. In addition, beliefs about three feeding practices (restriction on diet quality, indulgence in screen use and pressure for finishing) significantly influenced the valence of the associations. Results from the present work suggest the need to implement regulatory measures to reduce positive associations with ultra-processed products among parents and contribute to reduce their consumption among infants.

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