Are your kids are getting more obese due to targeted TV commercials? »
Obesity as we all know is an epidemic in this country and childhood obesity may be one emerging root cause. New research from the University of California-Davis studied the types of food advertisements seen by children watching English- and Spanish-language American television programs on Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons, on the most highly rated children’s cable channels.
20% of commercials were food related and of those a shocking 70% of the 5724 commercials examined were food commercials. Almost all of the commercials were for high sugar, cereals, snacks and beverages. In addition 91.2% were in English and the remaining commercials were in Spanish.
When compared to general audience commercials, children were exposed to 76% more food commercials. In fact, there were 5.2 food commercials per hour on children stations. Sadly this trend continued into typically teen-aged stations like MTV or BET.
The study’s authors state that, “health educators need to develop and evaluate comprehensive nutrition programs that augment nutritional education with media use reduction strategies to lessen exposure to ads…and efforts should also be made to introduce media literacy training into nutrition programs. Such literacy training can help children and adolescents understand both the economic motivations behind food advertising and the strategies used by industry to increase desire for their products. Greater awareness of the potential influence of industry may immunize young people from food advertising’s deleterious effects.”
We know that there is a phenomenon of social obesity whereby if your friends are obese, you are more likely to be obese. The last thing we need is to add media brainwashing of children into thinking it’s desirable to eat high sugar cereals and fast food.
Reference via Medical News Today:
1) Robert A. Bell, PhD; Diana Cassady, DrPH; Jennifer Culp, MPH, RD; and Rina Alcalay, PhD. “Frequency and Types of Foods Advertised on Saturday Morning and Weekday Afternoon English- and Spanish-Language American Television Programs.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, Volume 41, Issue 6, Published by Elsevier.
