Research

Pediatric studies link TV advertising with 'global fattening'

Since 1980, the proportion of overweight U.S. children ages 6 to 11 has more than doubled, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Childhood obesity doesn't stop at our nation's borders; it's a global trend. The usual suspects ­— poor eating habits, lack of exercise, parental obesity, genetics, and even demographics all play a role — but one controversial "x-factor" is emerging as a primary catalyst for the explosive growth of overweight children: television food advertising. Numerous studies at the W. P. Carey School of Business and around the world have found a link between the number of TV commercials children watch and the amount and type of food children consume.

2006-03-29

We obsess over carbohydrates, worship size-zero celebrities, and spend millions of dollars on diet fads and gym memberships, and yet America's collective waistband is expanding. Indeed, 30 percent of U.S. adults — more than 60 million of us — are now obese, according to the latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

But it's not just overworked, time-crunched adults who are packing on the pounds; childhood obesity is rising at an even greater rate. Since 1980, the proportion of overweight children ages 6 to 11 has more than doubled, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Today, about 16 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds are overweight, up from 7 percent in 1980.

A recent report published by the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity estimates nearly half of the children in North and South America will be overweight by 2010 — up from about one-third today. The usual suspects — poor eating habits, lack of exercise, parental obesity, genetics, and even demographics all play a role — but one controversial "x-factor" is emerging as a primary catalyst for the explosive growth of overweight children: television food advertising.

Numerous studies have found a link between the number of commercials watched and the amount and type of food children consume. Concurrent with this "global fattening," television has morphed from the three-network format of the 1970s and '80s to the 400-channel mega-cable packages that are the norm today, bringing more television and more commercials into U.S. homes. Consider some numbers:

• Minutes per week the average child watches television: 1,680
• Number of 30-second TV commercials kids view per year: 20,000
• Number of those 20,000 ads which are for food: 10,000
• Percentage of those 10,000 ads which are for fast food, sugary cereals, soft drinks, salty snacks, and candy: 95
• Rank of food products/fast-food restaurants among TV advertisements to kids: 1

But can we really blame Madison Avenue for what's happening to kids on Main Street? It's a tricky question to be sure, an issue tangled up with parental responsibility, genetics, behavioral psychology, and business ethics.

Tracing the effect

Ruth Bolton, a marketing professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, connected the dots between TV food advertising and childhood obesity more than 20 years ago in a groundbreaking study titled "Modeling the Impact of Television Food Advertising on Children's Diets." Bolton's study measured the effects of TV food commercials on children's diets.

"Children's exposure to television food advertising influences their diets in three separate ways. First, it significantly increases the number of their snacks; second, the additional snacks increase their caloric intake; and third, it significantly decreases their nutrient efficiency," Bolton wrote in a 1983.

Bolton's study was particularly sophisticated because of the unique nature of the data: white, middle-class families from Cleveland, Ohio, compiled 16-day television diaries and seven-day food diaries, which were cross-referenced against commercial data from TV stations. This allowed Bolton and her team to calculate the effect of exact food commercial minutes on children's caloric intake, nutrients, and how balanced their diets were.

The findings? The caloric intake of a child exposed to 25 additional minutes of food advertising per week was 1.39 percent higher than a child who was not exposed to these 25 additional minutes, after controlling for other factors. "After controlling for parental influence, we found a statistically significant effect on snacking frequency and therefore on caloric intake and nutrient deficiency. We were able to trace these effects in a detailed way to food commercials," Bolton explains.

Recent research is equally compelling: A study requested by Congress and released by the Institute of Medicine in December 2005 found that children, particularly those ages 2 to 11, are susceptible to advertising that encourages them to make poor nutritional choices. A 2004 report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed 20 years of research on the role of media in childhood obesity, and found that "the main mechanism by which media use contributes to childhood obesity may well be through children's exposure to billions of dollars' worth of food advertising year after year, starting at the very youngest ages."

Interestingly, this trend is occurring not only in America; childhood obesity and TV food advertising is garnering attention in Europe as well. Currently researching the matter for the Netherlands Ministry of Health, public health physician J. L. Veerman used Bolton's formula and his own mathematical simulation model of Dutch children's body mass index to calculate the correlation between food advertising and weight gain in the Netherlands.

"We estimate exposure to food advertising causes an average extra weight of about .75 kg [1.65 pounds] in Dutch children aged 6-12," Veerman says. Without the food advertising effect, "the overweight prevalence [in Dutch children overall] might be about 8 percent rather than 12 percent," he explains.

Apples vs. Apple Jacks

For food companies, the children's market is a top concern. Peddling food to kids is now a $13-billion-a-year business, complete with celebrity- and athlete-endorsed products, and marketing tie-ins with popular cartoons and TV shows. Industry giants such as Kraft Foods, Nabisco, Coke, and Pepsi all compete for prime Saturday morning advertising timeslots — and the name of the game is junk food.

"Corporations are in the business of making money. There's no money to be made marketing broccoli or carrots," says Naomi Mandel, assistant professor of marketing at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

Although parents ultimately control food purchases because they are doing the buying, children are likely to influence purchases, says Bolton. In other words, parents picking from the fruit bins may have a hard time competing against the collective effect of slick commercials. Anyone who has taken a trip down the grocery aisle with child in tow can attest to that. "If Batman is on the cereal box, you just lost the battle," Bolton says.

Why are kids so susceptible to food advertising? "Children have less resistance to advertising than adults. They do not evaluate the advertiser's intent when viewing a commercial, but see it as another part of the TV show," explains Mandel. "Therefore, it's more effective to target food ads — ads for everything really — toward kids rather than adults." Not everyone is convinced, however, that advertising's pull on children's dietary habits is as strong as the research seems to indicate. What about parental influence? The food served in schools?

"It is much more comfortable and guilt-averse to blame the culture of fast foods and availability for a child's weight problem than to work with yourself and/or your child to manage it," says Marianne Jennings, a professor of legal and ethical studies in business with the Department of Management at the W. P. Carey School. "We are not exactly rational in our thinking when it comes to weight loss and diets." Social and cultural issues also play a large role, points out John Lastovicka, professor of marketing at the W. P. Carey School.

"To reduce obesity, there are many behavioral changes that consumers must enact day in and day out on multiple fronts. This is difficult because of the infrastructure and other institutions supporting our affluent culture of plenty and convenience."

The suburban sprawl and choking highway traffic that has become the norm throughout the United States, for example, contributes to a more sedentary lifestyle. "Most of the housing developments built in this country in recent decades assume that an automobile is a prosthetic device," says Lastovicka. "And so we hardly ever walk to school, church, to go play with friends, or even to go shopping. We are just not as active as we used to be."

Bolton also admits there are mitigating factors. "Kids now are more likely to use the Internet and engage in other sedentary activities. Children could actually be watching less TV and still becoming more obese, not because of food commercials, but because they're sitting and not running around," she says.

"Also, you have to look at whether they are snacking more because they are seeing food commercials, or because they are watching more TV in general," she continues. "The double whammy in my study is that the kids were consuming more empty calories, which is consistent with experimental evidence toward a food commercial effect."

Fighting Goliath

Parental organizations and watchdog groups are lashing out against the food industry in what has become the quintessential American response: lawsuits. But proving food commercials responsible for the increase in childhood obesity is more difficult in a courtroom than in a laboratory.

"The liability cases [against food companies] have not done so well. Many states are passing laws that grant limited or no liability to companies that sell food for consumption and then are sued by customers who have gained weight who allege that their weight gain resulted from the non-healthful qualities of the companies' foods," says Jennings, citing the infamous McDonald's lawsuit, which was dismissed in 2003.

Another tactic has been for lawmakers to try restricting TV food commercials aimed at kids. The trick here, says Jennings, is proving that such action is the best way to reach the desired outcome of decreased obesity. "The Supreme Court has always permitted regulation of commercial advertising, but they do not like prohibitions or extreme limitations that cannot be justified," she explains. "They must show that the public goal could not be accomplished in another way."

The reaction from the food industry has been mixed. Some food companies have voluntarily scaled back on TV ads geared toward kids. Kraft, for example, announced recently that it would no longer advertise some of its snack foods during children's shows. Others, however, are flexing their marketing prowess in a different direction, making products appear to be healthier without actually changing their ingredients, according to Mandel.

"Some companies are simply adding pictures of kids playing sports to their packaging or their commercials, implying that 'product X' can be part of a healthy lifestyle, as long as you exercise," she says. Either way, experts do not believe that banning or reducing food commercials will solve the problem anytime soon. Solutions will be complex, and long-term. "A ban on food advertising to children would get an effect only gradually," notes the Netherlands' Veerman. "Children and parents have eating habits that are partly influenced by years of advertising. It will take time to change that."

Fast forward — literally

How is this issue likely to progress in the future? Ironically, although television itself — and the lifestyle of vegging out, watching shows, and snacking on junk food — is a product of technology, it is technology that may also help neutralize the situation. Regardless of what companies and lawmakers decide to do about TV food commercials, and whether or not kids continue to pressure their parents to buy unhealthy snacks, tech innovations such as the V-chip and digital video recording devices allow parents a greater measure of control over what kids watch on television.

"Technology allows us to filter more and select what type of advertising we are exposed to," explains Bolton. "Parents can use TiVo to select what children watch, avoid commercial television in favor of movies or recorded shows, or only allow kids to watch public television, among other things."

But what is perhaps the best defense against the power of food commercials on children's' eating patterns is clearly within our control. "As consumers," says Bolton, "we have to vote with our feet and show by our buying habits what we prefer for our kids."

Marketing Health Faculty