the homer simpson effect

The excellent Lucid Thoughts describes a fascinating new study on the links between food advertising and actual eating behaviour, based on a cleverly designed experiment. The gist of it is that food advertising does stimulate people, unconsciously, to eat more... although not necessarily to eat more of the advertised brand (I think LT may be over-interpreting a little when he says the ads aren't building a brand - does the paper actually show this or even investigate it? Sounds like a separate question about long-term effects to me but then I haven't bought and read the whole paper).