- USDA Gets Tougher on Salmonella in Raw Breaded Chicken Products
- Fragments of Bird Flu Virus Found in 1 in 5 Milk Samples
- Clients Got HIV Through ‘Vampire Facial’ Microneedling Treatments
- Take the Stairs & Step Up to Longer Life
- ‘Drug Take Back Day’ is Saturday: Check for Leftover Opioids in Your Home
- Loneliness Can Shorten Lives of Cancer Survivors
- A Stolen Dog Feels Like Losing a Child, Study Finds
- Healthier Hearts in Middle Age Help Black Women’s Brains Stay Strong
- Better Scans Spot Hidden Inflammation in MS Patients
- Which Patients and Surgeries Are ‘High Risk’ for Seniors?
Parents the Target of Deceptive Food Ads, Study Says
Parents are the target of many misleading television ads for children’s foods and drinks, new research indicates.
For the study, published online Nov. 9 in the journal Pediatrics, researchers analyzed TV commercials for children’s foods and beverages that aired over one year in the United States.
Most were for unhealthy products, such as sweetened cereals and sugary drinks, which came as no surprise, the researchers said.
What did surprise the researchers was that many of the commercials were directed at parents and featured lifestyle themes such as family bonding. For example, they found that 73 percent of total airtime for ads featuring children’s sugar-sweetened drinks targeted parents.
All of the parent-targeted ads for children’s sugary drinks included messages about nutrition or health benefits, even though such products are linked with obesity, dental decay and other health problems, the researchers pointed out.
“This marketing strategy consists of a one-two punch, with the children’s ads aiming to increase the likelihood of a purchase request from the child, and the parent advertising aiming to undermine the parent’s ability to say ‘no’ to the request,” senior study author Diane Gilbert-Diamond said in a journal news release.
How this might affect the family’s eating patterns isn’t known.
“We need to determine how these advertising messages might undermine the ability of parents to identify healthy foods for their children,” study lead author Jennifer Emond said in the news release. Emond is a research instructor in the department of epidemiology at the School of Medicine at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.
More information
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics offers advice about getting children to be healthy eaters.
Source: HealthDay
Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.