Thursday, 4 February 2010

Study Says TV Ads May Account for 1/3 to 1/7 of Obese American Children

If there were no advertising of unhealthy food on US television, between one in seven and one in three obese American children might not be obese, according a new study in the European Journal of Public Health.

"Limiting the exposure of children to marketing of energy-dense food could be part of a broader effort to make children’s diets healthier, said the study's authors, who built a mathematical simulation model to estimate the potential effects of reducing the exposure of 6- to 12-year-old US children to TV advertising for food on the prevalence of overweight and obesity.

The model was based on body measurements from NHANES 2003–04, the CDC-2000 cut-offs for weight categories, and scientific literature that relates advertising to consumption levels and consumption to body mass.


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