Nutritional Content of Foods Advertised During the Television Programs Children Watch Most

Abstract

Snack, convenience, and fast foods and sweets continue to dominate food advertisements viewed by children. Advertised foods exceed RDVs of fat, saturated fat, and sodium, yet fail to provide RDVs of fiber and certain vitamins and minerals.

A content analysis of food advertisements appearing in parenting magazines

“…Food advertisements (ads) can influence consumers' diet (5) and may also influence the diet of children whose parents are exposed to messages (6) . However, much of the existing research conducted on food ads has focused on ads targeted to children on TV (7)(8)(9) and in children's magazines (10,11) .…”

“…Of the 476 food ads, there were 302 unique ads and 174 duplicates. Similar to other studies (8) , we analysed all ads including duplicates because duplicate ads reflect greater potential exposure (MEE theory). Table 1 provides details regarding the coding categories.…”

Personal and lifestyle characteristics predictive of the consumption of fast foods in Australia

“…Similar patterns have been noted in the USA 4 . As one of the major contributors towards overweight is diet (with the oft-cited imbalance in the ratio of energy intake to energy expenditure) 5-10 , it is important that factors associated with unhealthy eating habits are understood.A frequently invoked indicator of unhealthy eating is the consumption of fast foods [11][12][13] , generally defined as foods purchased ready to eat, usually from large franchised chains 14,15 . Trends in the USA, the source of most of the literature on changes in eating patterns, have shown an increase in total foods eaten away from home, with the fast-food segment growing at double the rate of 1977 -1978 (NFCS 1977 and Continuing Survey of Food Intakes 1994-1996 (CSFII 1995, energy intake from restaurants and fast-food establishments increased by between 91.2% and 208% across all ages from 2 years and above (19-to 39-yearolds consuming the greatest proportion of restaurant and fast-food meals) 9 .…”

Children’s Food and Beverage Promotion on Television to Parents

“…4 Importantly, the foods promoted to children on television are primarily of poor nutritional quality. 1,4,5 Child-directed advertisements are often crafted to increase children's pestering for advertised items, 1,6 and strong evidence supports that exposure to food advertisements influences the food preferences and purchase requests of children. 7,8 As food manufacturers face increasing pressure to limit childdirected advertising for nutritionally poor foods, parents may become an increasingly important target audience.…”

“…Characteristics were based on previous studies that analyzed the content of television 5,14,19,20 and print 9,10 advertisements for children's foods. An iterative process was used in which 2 authors (JAE and SM) coded the advertisements while reviewing and refining the coding schema.…”