The food and beverage industries spend more than ten billion dollars a year in the US to market their products to children. And it's money well spent for them—by age 2 children may already harbor preferences for certain brands. And kids under 6 can often associate brands and with specific products. Such as McDonald's. Here's how powerful the McDonald's brand is, according to a study just published in the August issue of the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine: preschool kids were given the exact same food in either unmarked packages or in McDonald's packaging. But the kids, all between 3 and 5 years old, said they liked the taste better when the food looked like it was from McDonald's. One of the foods tested was carrots. What's up is that the kids said they liked quote McDonald's carrots endquote.