TV Ads Encourage Food Habits That Lead to Obesity and Poor Health

By Pat Elliott Expert HERWriter Guide Blogger

Rate This

A new study says people whose eating habits are influenced by television ads are developing habits that lead to weight gain and malnourishment. The TV audience is likely to have an extremely unbalanced diet, with excessive amounts of fats and sugar and minimal fruits and vegetables.

Published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the study compared the nutritional content of food choices influenced by TV to nutritional guidelines for a healthy, balanced diet. Investigators found that a 2,000-calorie diet consisting entirely of advertised foods would have 25 times the recommended servings of sugars and 20 times the recommended servings of fat, but less than half of the recommended servings of vegetables, dairy, and fruits. The excess of servings in sugars and fat is so large that, on average, eating just one of the observed food items would provide more than three times the recommended daily servings for sugars and two and a half times the recommended amount for fat for the entire day.

“The results of this study suggest the foods advertised on television tend to oversupply nutrients associated with chronic illness (e.g., saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium) and undersupply nutrients that help protect against illness (e.g., fiber, vitamins A, E, and D, calcium, and potassium),” according to lead investigator Michael Mink, PhD, Assistant Professor and MPH Program Coordinator, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, Ga.

The article indicates that the observed food items fail to comply with Food Guide Pyramid recommendations in every food group except grains. The average observed food item contained excessive servings of sugars, fat, and meat and inadequate servings of dairy, fruit and vegetables. The situation was similar for essential nutrients, with the observed foods oversupplying eight nutrients: protein, selenium, sodium, niacin, total fat, saturated fat, thiamin and cholesterol. These same foods undersupplied 12 nutrients: iron, phosphorus, vitamin A, carbohydrates, calcium, vitamin E, magnesium, copper, potassium, pantothenic acid, fiber, and vitamin D.

The authors advocate nutritional warnings for imbalanced foods similar to those mandated on direct-to-consumer drug advertisements. They recommend investigating health promotion strategies that target consumers, the food industry, public media, and regulation focusing on a three-pronged approach.

“First, the public should be informed about the nature and extent of the bias in televised food advertisements. Educational efforts should identify the specific nutrients that tend to be oversupplied and undersupplied in advertised foods and should specify the single food items that surpass an entire day’s worth of sugar and fat servings. Second, educational efforts should also provide consumers with skills for distinguishing balanced food selections from imbalanced food selections. For example, interactive websites could be developed that test a participant’s ability to identify imbalanced food selections from a list of options. This type of game-based approach would likely appeal to youth and adults. Third, the public should be directed to established nutritional guidelines and other credible resources for making healthful food choices.”

For more information:

“Nutritional Imbalance Endorsed by Televised Food Advertisements” by Michael Mink, PhD, Alexandra Evans, PhD, Charity G. Moore, PhD, Kristine S. Calderon, PhD, CHES, and Shannon Cosgrove, MPH, CHES appears in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Volume 110, Issue 6 (June 2010) published by Elsevier. http://www.adajournal.org/current

Add a CommentComments

There are no comments yet. Be the first one and get the conversation started!

Empowered

Pat Elliott Expert HERWriter Guide Blogger View Profile Send Message

We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.