MIRA LEE, YOONHYEUNG CHOI, ELIZABETH TAYLOR QUILLIAM, AND RICHARD T. COLE Playing With Food: Content Analysis of Food Advergames This study examines how food marketers use advergames, custom-built and branded online games, to promote food products to children and provides the nutritional content of the food products featured in the advergames. The results reveal that food marketers use advergames heavily, with candy and gum or food products high in sugar most frequently appearing in the analyzed games. Children are often invited to ‘‘play with’’ the foods integrated as active game components. Finally, despite the educational benefits of interactive games, fewer than 3% of the games analyzed in this study appear to educate children about nutritional and health issues. I am deeply concerned about the current unhealthy trend toward poor nutrition and childhood obesity, which the Institute of Medicine has linked to the prevalence of television advertisements for fast food, junk food, sugared cereals, and other foods wholly lacking in nutritional value. If this trend continues, our children could be the first in generations to enjoy shorter life expectancies than their parents (U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey 2007). The food, beverage, and restaurant industries spend $1.6 billion annually to promote their products to children and adolescents, with overall marketing expenditures for those brands of nearly $10 billion (FTC 2008b; Institute of Medicine of the National Academies 2006). Concurrently, over the past two decades, the United States has experienced a dramatic increase in childhood obesity. According to the 2003–2004 National Health and Nutrition Exami- nation Survey, 17% of U.S. children and adolescents aged two to nineteen years are overweight (National Center for Health Statistics 2007). Overweight Mira Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising, Public Relations, & Retailing at the Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (miralee@msu.edu).Yoonhyeung Choi is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Relations at the Hanyang University, Ansan, Korea (yoonhyeung@hanyang.ac.kr). Elizabeth Taylor Quilliam is an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising, Public Relations, & Retailing at the Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (quilliam@msu.edu). Richard T. Cole is a professor in the Department of Advertising, Public Relations, & Retailing at the Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (rcole1@msu.edu). This research was supported by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The authors thank Nora Rifon, Herbert Rotfeld, and the reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. The Journal of Consumer Affairs, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2009 ISSN 0022-0078 Copyright 2009 by The American Council on Consumer Interests SPRING 2009 VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1 129