This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Fast-food ads drive eating choices for preschoolers
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Children who watch fast-food advertising are more likely to consume the food being advertised, suggesting that parents may need assistance in determining the risks of exposing their children to these ads, according to research recently published in Public Health Nutrition.
“Young children do not have the cognitive ability to understand or recognize the persuasive intent of advertising and thus may be highly susceptible to food industry marketing tactics,” Madeline A. Dalton, PhD, professor, department of pediatrics, The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and colleagues wrote. “Despite extensive research documenting the content of TV food advertising in the [United States] and high levels of concern about children’s exposure to this advertising, there is a surprising lack of empirical data examining the impact of food advertising on children’s dietary intake in nonexperimental, real-world settings.”
To gather more information on this, Dalton and colleagues recruited 548 parents who had a preschool age child to complete a written survey that asked questions about child’s viewing time, channels watched and fast-food consumption over the past week. The mean age of the children was 4.4 years. The survey responses were then combined with a list of fast-food commercials that were aired on kids' channels during that same period to calculate the children's exposure to child-targeted television ads from Wendy’s, Subway and McDonald’s.
The researchers found that among the 40.8% of the children who saw one of the fast food restaurants’ ads, 42.5% had high exposure to these commercials, 34.2% had moderate exposure and 23.3% had low exposure. Although the food a child ate was signicantly associated with his or her exposure to the ads, it was not associated with overall television viewing time.
Dalton and colleagues also found that when the data was adjusted for demographics, socio-economic status and other screen time, moderate fast-food restaurant ad exposure was associated with a 31% (95% CI 1.12-1.53) increase in the likelihood of consuming fast food in the past week, and high fast-food restaurant ad exposure was associated with a 26% (95% CI 1.13-1.41) increase.
Dalton suggested ways that clinicians can use the study’s findings in their practice.
“The most important thing physicians can do is support policy change and educate parents. Some parents think their children are too young to be influenced by advertising, [but] this study shows that children as young as 3 years of age are being exposed to and most likely influenced by TV ads,” Dalton told Healio Family Medicine in an interview. “It is difficult for parents to make healthy decisions for their children when companies spend millions of dollars advertising unhealthy foods... By recommending that parents limit their children’s exposure to TV advertising, physicians are supporting parents in their effort to promote healthy foods.”
Other research has suggested reduced exposure to TV food advertisements in preschool-aged children may decrease the priming and reinforcement of dietary behaviors that lead to obesity and energy-dense food preferences. – by Janel Miller
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.