Fast Food Ads - Would Banning Them Help Childhood Obesity?
Most fast food meals make me feel a little ill -- yet often, when I catch a fast food commercial running on TV, the food looks so good I salivate like Pavlov's dog. That's exactly what those commercials are designed to do -- make you crave a trip to your nearest fast food joint for whatever triple-decker, bacon-packed, artery-clogging burger they're advertising this week. A recent study reviewed data on nearly 13,000 children to determine how many advertising commercials most children view on TV each week. Researchers believe the commercials have a big impact on the amount of children who eat fast food. They estimate that banning fast food commercials from TV would reduce obesity in children ages 3-11 by 18 percent and by 14 percent in adolescents ages 12-18.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-21-2008 @ 6:25AM
Dan said...
What parent let's their child dictate their eating behaviour? How I handle the insistant begging. I narrowed it done to what he (7) wanted, Green Burrito Taco Salad, then went and bought it for him. He was not ready for the spice. Then spent a few moments explaining how advertising works. did his salad look like the one on TV? No! reminded of other things he wanted off of TV that did not turn out to be the way they were presented. Works like magic, occasionally still asks, just remind him of what happened last time.
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11-21-2008 @ 6:39AM
u262f said...
I think more parents need to be like Dan.
Kids (and even adults) are easily influenced by commercials, but I also don't think banning fast food ads is going to prevent childhood obesity. Even if fast food ads were banned, that wouldn't stop advertisements for high-calorie sports drinks, over-sugared breakfast cereals, delivery pizza, desserts at sit-down family restaurants, etc. People need to learn how to take commercials with quite a bit of skepticism. Besides, how would they define "fast food"? American companies can be very innovative and creative. No matter how "fast food" is defined, all fast food companies need to do is repackage their products and/or rename their stores to no longer qualify as fast food under the definition. For example, Boston Market is already a branch of McDonald's. If McDonald's can't advertise, but Boston Market can, it'd probably just push more products (like the salads that have more salt, fat, and calories than Big Macs) on the Boston Market side. There is no way to define an effective ban that doesn't start to approach a blanket ad ban on all food commercials. Even if there's a blanket food ban, companies can still advertise movies, DVDs, and TV shows (like Baby Einstein and Veggie Tales) that convince children to sit inactively in front of a screen for hours on end, so the kids would probably still be obese unless all advertisements were banned. Considering that TV programs are often paid for by ad money, that would probably destroy TV programming too. While that in itself might not necessarily be a bad thing, it's probably going to hurt the economy.
11-21-2008 @ 11:41AM
Katheryn said...
I don't like the idea of banning things. As far as what children eat...don't parents have any control. The parent should decide how much tv their child watches and what food comes into the house.
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11-21-2008 @ 9:35PM
Paul Bryan said...
"yet often, when I catch a fast food commercial running on TV, the food looks so good I salivate like Pavlov's dog."
It's funny but watching Fast Food adverts do the opposite for me. All the pictures of over-processed, salty, fatty food make me want to eat something healthy.
Unfortunately, kids don't know any better, so I say ban the adverts.
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11-21-2008 @ 9:51PM
Maggie Vink said...
Paul, I wish I were more like you. I know what fast food does to me, yet I still think it looks good. And what you see on TV looks so much better than the mess you really get.
11-22-2008 @ 7:09PM
Paul Bryan said...
Yep, that's one thing that the fast food sellers have got right; what you see on TV usually looks miles better then what you'd receive in any fast food restaurant.
I'm sure if the adverts were real-to-life, then that would put most people off fast food.
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2-02-2009 @ 6:36PM
loves2shop2005 said...
Same with my kids....
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