As mentioned before, the amount of time my children watch television is limited. When they do watch it, it tends to be mainly on non commercial channels or DVDs. So I was completing amazed by the results of study discussed in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this month. It looked at research undertaken at the University of Sydney. The study looked at more than 20,000 ads aired during popular children’s programs, finding more than one-quarter promoted junk food.
The article concluded that :
“Children are subjected up to three inducements to eat junk food for every hour of television they watch”
Not only are there heavily concentrated junk food ads, but junk food ads that screen during children’s programs are 18 times more likely to use gimmicks like competitions and celebrity power.
Lesley King who was a researcher involved in the study says that:
“These techniques are used even more for unhealthy foods at the [time] children are watching television,” she said. “These all appear to be strongly reliant on these tactics to influence the decisions [children make].”
There is a move by some state governments to introduce legislation to regulate the advertisements that are on during children’ television show. I acknowledge that parents have a role in monitoring what and how much children watch, but when only one hour of children’s television exposes them to three junk food ads, I really think that it is time that there is some level of regulation introduced.
What do you think? Time to curb the level of junk food advertising aimed at our kids, or is it solely up to parents to manage?
4 Comments so far
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Our society as a whole is getting fatter. Everyone should be involved in fixing it. Junk food is bad for everyone, not just kids, so yes, I think there should be regulation on when these ads are aired. But it shouldn’t stop there either. There are many facets that contribute to this issue.
By Aprill on 09.26.08 4:00 pm | Permalink
This is an area of great concern to us all. Combining junk foods with decreasing levels of physical activity is leading the population in general, and our kids in particular to disaster in terms of health and well being. Regulation has some role in assisting with this sad state of affairs. But education and parental role modelling, supervision and if required, intervention re key to helping our kids make healthy choices.
By Keith Fitzpatrick on 09.26.08 8:03 pm | Permalink
This is, of course, sickening. However, it is hardly a surprise. We (I) may consider it irresponsible of any company to ply their evil wares on such an innocent audience, but they’re not really in the business of responsibility.
That said, we can legislate & legislate & legislate, but these kind of messages are like water: they will find a way to get through (look at the mother of all evil wares: tobacco).
While I also limit the TV watched by my kids (for the incidious advertising AND the messages of some individual programs), a more successful approach has been to teach them to be critical thinkers about what they see. An on-going battle, no doubt and certainly not happening in every household, obviously. But I am encouraged by some PSAs locally (Canada) which challenge children (all viewers actually!) to think about what it is they watch on ads & in the TV content
By harmzie on 09.27.08 1:30 am | Permalink
I agree with no junk food ads during kids tv timeslots. I also think education about healthy eating is vital, and probably to parents as well as kids. I know my son is learning about it in school. MacDonalds is a dirty word in our house and if we buy junk food it’s from the local chippy, and rarely.
jens last blog post..Over the shoulder bags
By jen on 09.27.08 1:28 pm | Permalink
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