“Children significantly preferred food products packaged in red. This is in line with our hypothesis that red exerts greater attraction than green for children when associated with food because, as in previous literature, food items with a red-packaged color are presumably associated with more pleasant tastes.” In fact, color has been found to have a profound, assumed, bias regarding the taste of that item.

These marketing techniques aim to seize their interest, arouse favorable feelings, and ultimately influence consumers to make unhealthy food selections.

Food marketers use vivid and eye-catching images to grab kids’ attention. A child’s interest can be captured right away through appealing branding, colorful packaging, and appealing food imagery. The products appear more appealing and desirable thanks to these exciting images, especially when one item is included with favored characters.

Marketers frequently link their food goods to beloved characters from well-liked children’s cartoons, movies, or TV series. Food corporations build an emotional connection with kids by using these characters on the packaging, in ads, and in promotional efforts. Children are encouraged to choose these products because of their association with their favorite characters.

Food manufacturers may pay additional fees to have their products intentionally arranged on store shelves at eye level so that kids can easily reach and see them. Also, they purposefully place unhealthy goods on end displays or specific types of materials close to checkouts, where kids are more likely to ask for them. These strategies are designed to entice parents and kids to make impulsive purchases. Have you ever seen a child holding an item and begging the parent to buy it while the parent insists that it’s not a good choice?

Commercials have a significant impact on kids’ eating preferences. The catchy jingles, entertaining animations, and intriguing stories featured in advertisements frequently capture children’s attention. These commercials make unhealthy food products seem irresistible by emphasizing the flavor, thrill, and delight they offer.

Research on the subject is revealing. “Research examining the effects of television food advertising on children has shown that children exposed to advertisements prefer branded foods at much greater rates than children not similarly exposed. Television advertising impacts food consumption and eating behaviors as well.” The push, as has been shown, is toward choices that are heavily advertised but not equally heavy in nutrition.

Incentives and promotions also draw kids to products. Toys, games, competitions, and tie-ins with well-known films or franchises are a few examples of these.

There is also the issue of peer pressure to want certain food products that their friends have, and here we have more stress to make poor choices. Remember, these are children without sufficient control over peer pressure. If other kids have them, they want to be included in the group and not seen as modern pariahs.

What is the solution to this constant barrage of advertisements for poor food choices by children? Parents need to have candid discussions with their kids about advertising and equip them to make better dietary decisions about healthy food options by fostering media literacy skills in children and teaching them to think critically.

Enticing images, character branding, product placement, engaging advertisements, incentives, and promotions in marketing have a significant impact on children’s eating preferences. Children are continually exposed to persuasive messages beyond traditional platforms. If we want children to develop into healthy adults, we need to give them the skills to make healthy choices, no matter the color, placement, or characters in ads.

The post Clever Choice of Colors Draws Children Into Poor Food Choices appeared first on Medika Life.

Have you ever thought that sound might have colors like white, pink, or brown? The naming may be something new, with the possible exception of white noise used in some therapeutic environments to protect confidentiality.

But the concept of specific sounds and how they may be helpful therapeutically has been receiving renewed attention since a non-scientist, Irv Teibel, began recording nature’s sounds in 1969. The true benefit of these aspects of nature and other sounds in the human aural spectrum would take time to be realized as having broad utility in healthcare or activities that require freedom from distraction.

Noise, or should we refer to it as sound differences according to the wavelength or frequency it comes across, is delineated in several different “colors.“ The colors currently identified include white, green, brown, pink, violet, blue, and gray noise. There’s even red noise, a form of brown noise by another name.

If all of this is confusing, it is understandable. Still, it is an interesting aspect of how sound, a.k.a. noise, might help treat psychological disorders, reduce stress, or assist us in our everyday activities.

Clinicians use white noise machines to mask discussions in their offices. Many small machines producing this audio signal are readily available to anyone. The frequency is 40 Hz to 60 Hz and may vary according to its use. Each noise, except white noise, may have a specific service and produce different effects on anyone listening to it.

Of course, black noise is the absence of sound (silence), as it would usually be called. The intricacies of these noise productions or the physics involved will not be discussed here but only offered as potential research for anyone interested in sound production and how sound may be manipulated for best use in, for example, music in therapeutic settings, work, academic efforts, writing, etc. And sound has found a home in assisting those with ADHD.

Empirically, white noise therapy has been able to improve specific tasks affected by ADHD symptoms, including speech recognition and reading and writing speed. Educational performance is one of the prime areas where any intervention, such as sound utility, might be effective. Without early intervention, this disorder has a negative effect on their lives, their educational efforts, their career opportunities, and also the social interactions they may pursue in the future.

White noise has been used in a variety of settings with several patient populations. It has been found helpful in intensive care to decrease the arousal of patients and help with sleep onset. White noise has also been found to have shown some behavioral and psychological improvements in elderly patients with dementia and schizophrenia.

It is also helpful in word and visual-spatial tasks in young and elderly adults. Students have shown improvement in new word recall compared to periods of silence. In addition to these benefits, white noise has also been proven to have some ability to diminish impulsivity in children with ADHD and working memory.

How might we use sound in our daily lives at home and work? Many will choose to listen to certain types of music to energize them, others another style to create a quiet background against which they want to work. I suppose that’s why an album of recordings of Gregorian chants made the hit list of popular music charts. The album sold four million copies worldwide. The artist Ravi Shankar released his “Chants of India” when a music company wanted to continue their “chants” success.

One experiment tested several sounds to identify which might promote concentration and verbal reasoning in an office environment. The six different sounds were classified into the music group, including running water sound (RW), pure classic music (PM), classic music with lyrics (ML), and noise group, including intelligible speech (IS), mechanical noise of keyboard and printer (MN), and telephone ring (TR).

The varying results were attributed to the task, and the type of sound played. On the one hand, different activities and tasks consumed different mental workload resources, and on the other hand, different types of background sounds might have different effects on each kind of mental workload resource, so that the effects of one background sound might vary when subjects engaged in different jobs.

Summing it all up would indicate that sound and how we utilize it can benefit us in all of our environments. Sound downloads and videos are available for free download (some have fees) at the following:

https://www.freesoundeffects.com/free-sounds/ambience-10005/https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/search/nature/

Other sites are available, but carefully read the terms of use. YouTube has many videos with sound.

The post The “Colors” of Sounds Have an Effect on All of Us appeared first on Medika Life.