Television Ads are Contributing to Childhood Obesity
A study published in the The Journal of Law and Economics by researchers at the City University of New York is showing what many parents and teachers already knew to be true, that television ads are contributing to childhood obesity.
In a research study supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases researchers Chou, Rashad and Grossman estimated that the effects of television fast-food restaurant advertising on children and adolescents are playing a role with children being overweight.
These researches predict that a ban on fast-food restaurant advertising 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.
In addition, eliminating the tax deductibility of junk food advertising would produce more declines of between 5 and 7 percent in these outcomes.
With estimates that children see over 30,000 television commercials a year and a third of them are for junk food, it is likely that eliminating junk food ads would go a long way in helping manage the advertising world’s contribution to promoting childhood obesity.
These findings go along with earlier ones conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation which found that “The vast majority of the foods that kids see advertised on television today are for products that nutritionists would tell us they need to be eating less of, not more of, if we’re going to get a handle on childhood obesity.”
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Add comment November 22nd, 2008
