Research shows drop in unhealthy food ads during kids’ TV shows

Children’s publicity to food and drinks advertisements throughout children’ TV reveals has dropped considerably since meals and beverage makers pledged to cease promoting unhealthy fare throughout kids’s TV reveals. Yet, based on analysis from the University of Illinois Chicago, kids below 12 nonetheless see greater than 1,000 food-related advertisements a yr, most of them for unhealthy merchandise.

For the examine, revealed in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed tv rankings and promoting knowledge from 2013 via 2022. The examine authors discovered {that a} dramatic decline in food and drinks ads throughout children’ reveals didn’t totally eradicate kids’s publicity to advertisements for merchandise excessive in saturated fats, trans fats, complete sugars and sodium.

“Kids are nonetheless seeing a couple of thousand advertisements per yr on different applications, and nearly all of advertisements that children see are nonetheless for unhealthy merchandise,” stated Lisa Powell, distinguished professor and director of well being coverage and administration within the UIC School of Public Health. “This is essential because the World Health Organization has acknowledged that decreasing kids’s publicity to unhealthy meals and beverage ads is a key technique for bettering each kids’s diets and well being.”

In 2006, a bunch of meals, beverage and restaurant firms pledged to solely promote wholesome merchandise on kids’s tv programming, outlined as reveals the place a minimum of 35% of viewers are below the age of 12. Later revisions in 2014 and 2020 established dietary standards for what qualifies as unhealthy and due to this fact shouldn’t be marketed to younger audiences.

Using tv rankings knowledge from The Nielsen Company, UIC researchers discovered that following adjustments in firms’ self-regulation, the variety of basic meals and beverage commercials seen throughout kids’s applications fell by over 95%. However, they discovered that 60% of the remaining meals and beverage advertisements have been nonetheless for unhealthy merchandise.

And total, children below the age of 12 nonetheless noticed greater than 1,000 food-related ads per yr, on common. Because of the steep decline in meals and beverage advertisements throughout kids’s reveals, as a lot as 90% of this publicity got here from watching reveals with decrease child-audience shares.

That shift means that laws towards promoting unhealthy meals and drinks throughout hours when kids are prone to watch tv could be more practical than focusing restrictions particularly on kids’s reveals, the authors write.

The researchers additionally discovered a persistent racial distinction in publicity to food-related ads. While the variety of these advertisements seen by each Black and white kids declined from 2013 to 2022, Black kids noticed considerably extra ads than their white counterparts, due partially to extra time spent watching tv.

In basic, kids’s time watching tv has declined, indicating the necessity for analysis on their publicity to promoting on different media. Powell’s group is within the early phases of launching a brand new venture to measure the advertisements kids encounter via social media platforms and digital leisure.

“We know that the media children devour is altering. They’re spending extra time on their cell units, whether or not it’s a pill or a telephone, and so they’re seeing a number of advertisements,” Powell stated. “We really want to know the place else the meals firms goal children and what they’re seeing.”

In addition to Powell, UIC co-authors embody Julien Leider, Rebecca Schermbeck and Aline Vandenbroeck, together with University of Connecticut co-author Jennifer Harris. The examine was supported by grants from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.