Are Children Choosing Their Food, or Are We Designing Their Choices?

Zesti Reflection | v1.1 | 2 November 2026

Research into children’s responses to ultra-processed foods caught my attention recently. Not because it offers a simple answer to what children should eat, but because it raises an interesting question about how our food choices develop.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, followed 46 children aged seven to ten. It reported associations between ultra-processed food intake, responses to appetising food images in a brain region involved in reward, and subsequent changes in body fat.

Interesting, certainly. But association isn't causation. We don't know from this study whether eating these foods changes reward responses, whether children who respond more strongly to food cues tend to eat more of them, or whether other influences are involved.

What interests me is the everyday question behind the research: why does one choice seem so much more attractive than another?

Imagine a child coming home from school. There's a familiar packaged snack in the cupboard. It tastes good, needs no preparation and can be eaten straight away. There might be fruit or vegetables too, but perhaps they need preparing, or simply aren't what the child fancies.

Both are available. But are they equally easy or appealing?

We often talk about food choices as though people weigh up the nutritional merits of everything in front of them and then decide. That's not really how life works, is it?

What we choose depends partly on what is available, how much effort it takes and what we expect to get from it. And those expectations are shaped by experience. Enjoy something and you may want it again. Buy what gets eaten and it becomes more readily available next time. Leave something untouched and it may disappear from the shopping list.

A choice today can help shape the conditions of tomorrow's choice.

That doesn't mean the brain research has established this process. It hasn't. But it does make me curious about the relationship between experience, anticipated reward and what comes to feel worth choosing.

It also raises a less comfortable question. When we say children are making unhealthy choices, how much attention do we pay to the conditions surrounding them?

Manufacturers, retailers, advertising, schools and households all influence which foods are familiar, affordable, convenient and attractive. Children don't design these environments. Neither do parents have unlimited control over them. Time, income, access and family circumstances matter.

Telling someone to choose differently doesn't necessarily change what feels possible.

This is where NOTICE, in the Zesti Method, seems a useful place to begin. Not with an instruction, but with curiosity. What is actually available? What makes one option attractive and another difficult? What happens after the choice? Does that experience alter what happens next?

Of course, noticing isn't the same as deciding what should be done. Parents have responsibilities, children are still developing, and evidence about nutrition matters. Nor should we assume that every choice needs correcting.

But perhaps we spend so much time discussing the behaviour we want to change that we overlook the relationships that make it likely.

The study offers an association worth investigating, not a verdict on children or their parents. For me, its value lies partly in the questions it leaves open.

Are children simply choosing what to eat? Or are we all, in different ways, helping to create the conditions in which some choices become almost inevitable?

And what might change if we started by noticing those conditions?

Research: “Ultraprocessed Food Intake, Striatal Response to Food Cues, and Adiposity Gain in Children.” JAMA Network Open (2026). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.40252.