The More Sugar It Has The More It Is Advertised

cereals advertised to children had 85 percent more sugar

Research done by the respected Yale University Rudd Center for Food Policy shows that food manufacturers are heavily marketing sugar laden breakfast cereals to children in America. The study author Professor Kelly Brownell claims that one of the reasons for America’s huge problem with childhood obesity is the unhealthy high amount of sugar in these cereals.

She observed that the most amount of marketing focused at children tends to be those cereals which are the least healthy and that the healthy ones rarely get a mention. She said that the unhealthy ones were being marketed “aggressively”.

For her study she looked at average American preschool children and observed that they see on average 642 entertaining cereal advertisements annually.  She said that children would be targeted with high sugar low nutrition adverts where the adults were targeted by high fibre, low sugar healthy cereals. She said that those cereals advertised to children had 85 percent more sugar, 60 percent more salt and 65 percent less fibre than those cereals targeted at adults.

This sort of information shows how it is time for the American government to start to get tough on food manufacturers and to legislate firstly on the amount of advertising that is allowed to be directed at children, and secondly on the amount of added salt and sugar that is added to all foodstuffs including breakfast cereals. It is not right that impressionable young children are being force fed these unhealthy advertisements which make it much more difficult for parents to feed them healthily.

The United Kingdom health authorities need to sit up and take note of this too because there’s too much fast food being advertised at children which impacts greatly on their future quality of life. Obese children are often unhappy children who are bullied, perceived to be stupid and who often end up being obese for the rest of their lives with a lower quality of life and a high incidence of illness.

Gordon Brown what are you waiting for?!