The impact of athlete endorsement on estimates of nutritional content of food meals

In today’s society, high status individuals such as athletes are considered commodities to be sponsored. Sponsoring athletes or sports teams is a method employed by brands to endorse their products to the public through the media. Athlete endorsement can lead to the formation of favourable attitudes towards a brand (Till, Stanley & Priluck, 2008), and purchase intentions purchase behaviour (Bush, Martin & Bush, 2004; Spry, Pappu & Cornwell, 2011). Those who are socialised into engaging and following sport are likely to not only form favourable attitudes towards unhealthy consumption, as a consequence of the associations between sportspersons, teams and competitions with unhealthy consumption, but also a greater likelihood of unhealthy consumption. Owing to the potential implications of athletes endorsing unhealthy consumption and evidence of this is today’s society; this study aimed to examine the impact of athlete endorsement on estimates of nutritional content of food meals. Using a repeated measures design, 260 participants attended the laboratory on three separate occasions: (1) exposure to images of food meals only (baseline); (2) athlete endorsed food meals; (3) and public endorsed food meals. The order of the experimental trials was counterbalanced. Initial data analysis suggests that estimates of nutritional content of food are healthier when endorsed by athletes than both the baseline and public endorsement condition. In linewith recent suggestions by Flint et al. (2014), athlete endorsement of unhealthy food and drink may lead to unhealthy consumption and favourable attitudes towards those brands, which may have implications for obesity prevalence and other health related concerns. The present study suggests that greater sponsorship restrictions for athletes