ORIGINAL ARTICLE Measuring Brand Awareness as a Component of Eating Habits in Indian Children: The Development of the IBAI Questionnaire Maria Gabriella Vecchio & Marco Ghidina & Achal Gulati & Paola Berchialla & Elizabeth Cherian Paramesh & Dario Gregori Received: 28 March 2014 /Accepted: 1 April 2014 # Dr. K C Chaudhuri Foundation 2014 Abstract Objective To develop an instrument that allows one to esti- mate the Indian children’ s brand awareness of alimentary products. Methods The IBAI (International Brand Awareness Instru- ment), an age specific tool composed of 12 sheets with images reporting brand logos of alimentary products, has been adjust- ed for the Indian context in order to investigate on infants’ cognitive skills of recalling and recognizing. The IBAI was piloted in a sample of 100 children aged from 3 to 10 y and enrolled in New Delhi schools. Results Children aged 7–10 y showed an higher brand aware- ness as compared to those of 3–6 y. Conclusions The IBAI instrument may be a component for further analysis of the influence of food marketing on child’ s diet, foods’ choices and preferences within the Indian social and cultural macro-context. Findings suggest that children over 6 y are particularly gullible by brands and TV promoted advertising. Prevention through information should, therefore be offered to school aged children and their parents, involving teachers, nutritionists and experts in developmental psychol- ogy also. Keywords Awareness . Brand marks . Childhood . Food logos . IBAI . Eating disorders . India Introduction The rate of obese and overweight people is ever-growing worldwide, and childhood and adolescent obesity is now considered one of the most important global plagues [1]. While up to some years ago it was especially an issue of developed countries, now-a-days the problem of weight gain in children is affecting also the developing ones. India showed an increase of obesity from 4.9 to 6.6 % between 2003–04 and 2005–06, and recently the prevalence of childhood obesity is about 22 % [2]. Although genetic specific predisposition represents a facilitating factor for the development of obesity in India [3], several co-causing con- textual factors have to be considered with regard to obesity epidemic. A switch in traditional diets, due to the popularity of fast foods, soft drinks and high energy-dense foods, matched to the rapid spread of sedentary lifestyle patterns, has resulted in the loss of equilibrium between energy intake and expenditure [4]. Moreover, important determinants of childhood obesity in developing countries include high socioeconomic status, mar- keting by transnational food companies and residence in met- ropolitan cities [5]. The latter is a factor widely considered by several researchers and specifically in India, it has been dem- onstrated that there is a substantial difference among the prevalence of overweight and obese children in urban areas (11.63 and 2.35 % respectively) compared to children from the rural ones (4.7 and 3.63 %, respectively) [6]. M. G. Vecchio : M. Ghidina (*) ZETA Research Ltd., Via Caccia, 8, 34129 Trieste, Italy e-mail: marcoghidina@zetaresearch.com A. Gulati Department of Otorhinolaryngology (ENT), Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India P. Berchialla Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences, University of Torino, Torino, Italy E. C. Paramesh College of Nursing, Lakeside Institute of Child Health, Lakeside Hospital, Bangalore, India D. Gregori Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy Indian J Pediatr DOI 10.1007/s12098-014-1447-y