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• Greater childhood financial adversity predicts unhealthy food choice. • Diminished self-control mediates childhood financial adversity and unhealthiness of food choice. • Situational scarcity enhances the effect of childhood financial adversity on unhealthy food choice through diminished self-control. Childhood environments have lasting effects on individuals well into adulthood for a range of behaviours, and this holds true for food-related behaviours. In this study we ask how situational scarcity and individual self-control influence the relationship between early childhood financial adversity (ECFA) and unhealthiness of food choices. We propose situationally-experienced scarcity in adulthood may differentially influence individuals who did and did not experience financial adversity as a child in exercising self-control and in turn making less healthy food choices. Our study supports this prediction, finding high ECFA individuals to be more susceptible to situational scarcity such that there is an attenuation of self-control, resulting in greater unhealthy food choices. The moderating role of situational scarcity is more (vs. less) substantial for those who experienced higher (vs. lower) ECFA. These findings are further discussed in terms of implications for various audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Unique insight in food-related associations in low SEP parents and children. • Results suggest implicit 'healthy is tasty' intuition. • In-depth methodological and theoretical considerations. • Difficult to reach study population with a lower socioeconomic position. • Dyads of primary school-aged children and parents. Many people implicitly (automatically) believe that unhealthy foods are tastier than healthy foods, even when they explicitly (deliberately) report that they don't. It is unclear whether this 'unhealthy = tasty intuition' is already present in childhood. Children from families with a lower socioeconomic position (SEP) consume poorer diets than children from families with a higher SEP. Paradoxically, populations with a lower SEP are underrepresented in research and least reached by lifestyle interventions. This study explored implicit and explicit associations between healthiness, tastiness and liking of foods in primary school-aged children and parents with a lower SEP. These associations and an estimate of dietary intake were assessed with implicit association tests and paper-and-pencil questionnaires, developed and adapted specifically for this target group. Participants were recruited at Dutch food banks. Results of 37 parent-child dyads indicated that children and parents implicitly associated healthy foods and tastiness more strongly with each other than healthy foods and not tasty (D = −0.19, p =.03 and D = −0.46, p <.001, respectively). Explicitly, parents showed similar results, while children rated pictures of unhealthy foods as tastier than pictures of healthy foods. Following the discrepancy between our hypotheses, results, and more unhealthy eating habits that often prevail in families with a lower SEP, potential explanations are discussed. We address the possibility that an internalised social norm was exposed, rather than an intrinsic belief. We propose that this research calls for in-depth qualitative research on food-related preferences and norms in the everyday life of low SEP families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]