Purpose -The purpose of the current study is to identify the extent to which promotional strategies and attention elements appear in a sample of children's food commercials.Design/methodology/approach -The research was a content analysis study of 147 commercials that examined 20 separate promotional strategies and 20 different attention elements. The sample of commercials included those appearing on five US broadcast networks during children's programming blocks.Findings -Findings show that the most frequently used promotional strategies were the use of jingles/slogans, showing children with the food, and the use of product identification characters. The use of animation, ''real children,'' and animal characters were the most used attention elements in the commercials.Research limitations/implications -The sample of commercials used in this analysis was obtained from broadcast networks and did not include cable network programming; however, the commercials represent commercials from a wide variety of food products and food product categories. Although not determined empirically, the same commercials appeared to air on the broadcast and cable networks.Practical implications -Health and nutrition educators can draw on this study's findings by applying this information in creating more effective nutrition and health promotion messages designed to counter promotional strategies and attention elements in advertising messages that are addressed in this study.Originality/value -Although specific promotional strategies and attention elements found in children's food commercials have been identified, there have been no studies addressing the frequency of these strategies/elements among a sample of commercials.

The results of this study are consistent with those conducted in the United States suggesting that sexual behavior, psychosocial distress, and substance use are interconnected. These findings highlight the need for school health education and health services in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically the efforts to reduce psychosocial distress and prevent substance use in efforts to prevent the spread of human immunodeficiency virus and other sexually transmitted infections.

The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between adolescent substance use and psychosocial distress indicators among 30,851 adolescents aged 11 to 16 in four countries (Philippines, China, Chile, and Namibia). Global School-Based Student Health Survey data from these countries provided information about frequency and lifetime use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs as well as items about early adolescents' feelings of loneliness, worry, hopelessness, suicide, and number of close friends. Overall, there were significant relationships between adolescent substanceuse behaviors and a measure of "global" psychosocial distress for both boys and girls in all four countries and for four of the five items of psychosocial distress (often lonely, often worry, sad/hopeless, and having a suicide plan). The association between substance use and psychosocial distress was also consistent in both genders and across the four countries. These results have important implications for professionals who work with adolescent populations.

Our findings suggest that health promotion programmes should build on possible social influences, i.e. the role of peers, parents and significant others in general, in fostering adolescents' physical activity.

The aggressive advertising and marketing of high caloric food products to children is implicated as a potential causative factor in the childhood obesity epidemic. This study analyzed 147 commercials appearing during children's programming on U.S. broadcast networks for a wide range of potential emotional and rational advertising appeals. The most prominent emotional appeals were fun/happiness and play followed by fantasy/ imagination, social enhancement/peer acceptance, and coolness/hipness. Many of the products used the term ;super-charged' or a similar adjective to describe the powerful taste or other physical properties of the product. More than one-third of all the commercials used a fruit appeal or association. Statements or depictions that a product was healthy or nutritious were quite rare among the commercials. This seems to imply that health and nutrition claims are understood by food marketers to not be salient concerns among children and as such are not a selling point to children. Commercials for high sugar cereal products and fast food restaurants differed in several respects. This study can serve to guide child health care professionals and other child advocates in designing measures that counter food advertising messages directed at children.