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Fast-food Ad Ban Could Cut Child Obesity: US Study
WASHINGTON - Banning fast-food advertising on television in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent, researchers said on Wednesday.
Banning fast-food advertising on television in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent, researchers said on Wednesday.
(AFP/File/Yoshikazu Tsuno) But the team at the National Bureau of Economic Research questioned
whether it would be practical to impose that kind of government
regulation -- something only Sweden, Norway and Finland have done.
"We have known for some time that childhood obesity has gripped our culture, but little empirical research has been done that identifies television advertising as a possible cause," said economist Shin-Yi Chou of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
"Hopefully, this line of research can lead to a serious discussion about the type of policies that can curb America's obesity epidemic."
For their study, funded in part by the federal government, Chou and colleagues used data on nearly 13,000 children from the 1979 Child-Young Adult National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, both issued by the U.S. Department of Labor.
"The advertising measure used is the number of hours of spot television fast-food restaurant advertising messages seen per week," they wrote in the Journal of Law and Economics.
"Our results indicate that a ban on these advertisements would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3-11 in a fixed population by 18 percent and would reduce the number of overweight adolescents ages 12-18 by 14 percent."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 13.9 percent of children aged 2 to 5 are overweight, 18.8 percent of those aged 6 to 11 are and more than 17 percent of those 12 to 19.
The percentages have been steadily rising.
Television watching is also known to raise obesity rates, both because children exercise less and because it can interfere with sleep.
The Institute of Medicine reported in 2006 that there was compelling evidence linking food advertising on television and increased childhood obesity.
One study suggested that children viewed an average of about 20,000 commercials aired on television per year in the late 1970s, rising to 30,000 per year in the late 1980s and more than 40,000 per year in the late 1990s.
Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Cynthia Osterman
11 Comments so far
Show AllWhat the hell. If it is progressive to censor Rush Limbaugh, lets censor McDonalds as well.
Who will be next?
The pharmacutical companies, again, please?
Yeah, forget about personal responsibility, let's just attack capitalism and create unfair marketing restrictions!
Yeah, let's target those who are yet incapable of being responsible for themselves.
Sioux Rose
CHESSGAME: I'm with you! The key to a sane society involves a balance between profit-driven rights and obligations to the welfare of citizens. Under Bush (and Clinton furthered this to his discredit) the laws bent over backwards to support profit over people; now we need to find a modicum of balance. I read somewhere that psychologists WERE used to find symbols, colors and images that were particularly stimulating to TWO YEAR OLDS! They want loyal consumers from the womb to the grave, and it's diabolical! Mammon and Mars are not the only viable 'gods' to negotiate with, especially if we want quality existences on this mundane plane!
Don't jump so fast, Liberty. The targeting and manipulation of children is what is being challenged here. It was intelligently decided to ban cigarette advertising from TV, and the intentional targeting of minors by tobacco companies. I also believe that other countries have similar bans when it comes to advertising targeted specifically at children. You wouldn't let a sexual predator into your house, but corporate predators seem to have free reign. Sensible regulation does not take away anyone's rights, it only curtails exploitation, in this case, exploitation of the young and impressionable.
What happen to the parents responsibility? KIds can't drive them selves to MCD and they sure do not have the Money, Mom and Dad are they ones buying fast food for thier kids.
I wonder if you are a parent, dagger. If you let your kids watch Cartoon Network, or Nickelodeon (Disney mostly advertises its own programming), they are incessantly bombarded by junk food and other commercials. The result of this is that your children nag you relentlessly to buy the products when you take them shopping. Parents then become a 'no' machine, or wind up making numerous trips to the dentist. It is no secret that corporations that market to children hire child psychologists to assist them with their adds. In my case, what has happened is that I play mostly DVDs and online Netflix shows and movies (and watch PBS), and eschew corporate-sponsored television.
But it's much more insidious now because diabetes and associated childhood obesity are dramatically on the rise, so it has become a public health issue (cause and effect of marketing crap food to children?). I don't argue that parents should take responsibility, but shouldn't corporations share in this as well, or should they have total 'freedom' in this regard? For the past 30 years or so there has been a drive to deregulate just about everything (in the name of profit and free enterprise), and look at where it has gotten us. Perhaps you think we should allow cigarette adds back on TV as well? Corporate freedom without corporate responsibility? I don't think so.
Maybe the obvious needs to be pointed out here for a couple of readers:
Mickey D's targeting children doesn't just mean those ads you & I see on TV in the evening, it means those ads inbetween Saturday morning and after-school hour cartoon shows. The cartoon characters in the ads blur into and are indistinguishable from the cartoons (shows are simply devices to deliver audiences for the ads, anyway)
I think most of us understand that adults buy the products for kids, but with free toys (Happy meals), brightly colored play structures easily seen from the road or sidewalk (and often the only public place to play in an urban neighborhood), ad campaigns with ties to popular children's movies, sponsoring games with big $$$ prizes and the kind of seamless, unrelenting wrap-around advertising aimed at children by McDonalds is just plain difficult to ignore. Even parents determined to avoid McD's can find themselves turning into that familiar drive-up window for an ice cream cone, or stopping with the kids at a McD's to use the bathrooms during a drive across the country.
These fast food places (not just McD's) have become so ubiquitous (even located inside schools) they have become very dangerous to kids' health.
High sodium, high fat, high sugar diets are all too common in the U.S. now.
I would gladly support a ban not only of the TV and movie ads targeting children, but the stores themselves!!!
Sioux Rose
Or they could retain their infrastructure and learn how to offer HEALTHIER low-fat meals instead. Who said french fries have to be a staple? Or that dead meat = nutrition, particularly when coupled with white flour-bread? In short, they could give a damn about the nutrition they are offering their customers. Many have made good cases that it's the ubiquitous corn syrup that's really messing with blood sugar levels and exacerbating early on-set Diabetes.
The growing uneven food supply in our world is one cause of this problem. Luckily for other rich counties because they have sufficient and sometime more than enough food supply and they have more food calories to be burn up. Demand dictates the course of the market, and the demand has been growing for payday loans and for fast food restaurants' dollar menus. Fast food chains have been seeing a growing balance sheet, but despite the increased revenue from the food places like Arby's and McDonalds, Wendy's has decided to go for the value of thrift in a recession stricken economy. The CEO has announced the chain will be eliminating Wendy's Breakfast from 475 of their stores to start with. Whereas the common folk are getting payday loans to help meet operating costs, Wendy's will be gunning to cut $60 million in spending. The chain promises a return for the breakfast menu in 2011. To read or comment about this story, visit your payday loans source.