Fast Food Advertising and Child Obesity
According to a new study, a ban on fast-food advertising to children would cut the national obesity rate by as much as 18 percent.
The National Bureau of Economic Research found that the study provided "the largest of its kind to directly tie childhood obesity to fast-food advertising on American television."
Funded by National Institute of Health, using data from 1979 and 1997 from the U.S. Department of Labor, the study was based on the viewing habits of 13,000 children.
From the report:
The study measured the number of fast-food ads kids watched and found a fast-food TV-ad ban for children's programming would reduce the number of overweight children aged 3 to 11 by 18%, and for adolescents (12- to 18-year-olds) by 14%. Data also revealed a more pronounced effect on males than females.
Read the entire blog post on Advertising Age: NIH: Banning Fast Food Ads Will Make Kids Less Fat - Advertising Age - News
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4 comments:
Obesity is such an epidemic. If banning advertising would work, I'd think it's worth it.
I'm voting we Ban Television, unplug it people! That one action solves a world of issues with children. Do what kids have always done - come home and Go Outside and Play. Now we have ads to get kids to commit to active play 60 minutes a day - what happened to only coming inside to eat dinner and back out again? What happened to kids pretending they didn't hear mom call them to dinner because they were having too much fun playing outside??
Banning fastfood ads may work, but the real culprit here are the parents themselves.
@Brianne. I disagree with blaming parents. The real culprit is the economic system of our culture. Taking parents out of the home to work to buy more and better "stuff." We have been sold a bill of goods that you must have this house, these cars, TVs in every room, etc. etc. I remember my mom saying that one day they would make you pay for TV and that was completely unacceptable. If you couldn't get it with the antenna on the roof then forget it! Now people pay huge sums for More TV! The American Way went from financial security for all, to financial overload for all. If every home went back to just the simple space needed, and one TV everyone shared, just basic channel availability, and/watched together, and everyone made sure to spend more time outdoors than indoors, it would stop a lot of child obesity, and adult obesity as well! It's a wake up call for everyone. Less is more.
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