are exposed to one food advertisement every 8 minutes

Research which was designed to evaluate exactly how many food advertisements young children were watching in America came up with the shocking statistic that 70 percent were promoting either fast food or sugar and calorie laden items. They also said that on average there were about five of these advertisements shown every hour. The study done by the University of California-Davis looked at both English and Spanish language television programs specifically at times when children were likely to be watching such as Saturday morning and weekday afternoons. They looked at twelve different networks which were likely to be of interest to children.

In all nearly 6,000 advertisements were recorded out of which over twenty percent were directly related to food. Out of these over a third of them were adverts for either fast food restaurants or processed convenience foods and over 70 percent of them were for food items that are known to play a factor in the ever growing childhood obesity problem in America.

Probably the most shocking statistic is that when the number of food advertisements seen on children’s networks is compared to the number of food advertisements seen on general television viewing channels there is a 76 percent increase. In fact children who watch on children’s television networks on a Saturday morning are exposed to one food advertisement every 8 minutes. Other things which the researchers noted were that 80 percent of the music channel MTV food commercials were either for fast food restaurants, sugary beverages or sweets showing that older children were being targeted too.

This study which was printed in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior shows that the food companies have done their research and know that young children are especially impressionable and therefore they direct their adverts at them. Unfortunately this creates unhealthy eating habits which they find very difficult to change when they get older.  Ukmedix News has previously published research that shows that if children get to their teenage years overweight or obese they are statistically very likely to stay that way for the rest of their lives.

By directing their advertisements at children, food companies are not just likely to increase their present sales but are also likely to create thousands of children who will take their unhealthy eating habits into adulthood and thus boost the unhealthy food sales for the future too. Legislation is required sooner rather than later if the childhood obesity problem which is costing nations millions of pounds in increased health care costs as well as ruining thousands of young lives is to be dealt with. At Ukmedix News our message to both the American and United Kingdom health authorities is “what are you waiting for?”