Food from McDonald's has aura for kids

STANFORD, Calif., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. children thought chicken nuggets they think are from McDonald's taste better than an identical, unbranded meat nugget, a study found.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital asked children ages 3 to 5 to sample two identical foods.

Children preferred the taste of the food with the McDonald's restaurant's familiar "Golden Arches" to the food from unmarked paper packaging, reported the findings published in the August issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Lead author Dr. Thomas Robinson, director of the Center for Healthy Weight at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, also found the degree of preference expressed by the children correlated with the number of television sets they had in their homes and the frequency with which they ate at McDonald's.