Nov

30

(Childhood Obesity News) TV Ads Contribute to Childhood Obesity, Economists Say - New York Times

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The researchers used several statistical models to link obesity rates to the amount of time spent viewing fast food advertising, finding that viewing more fast food commercials on television raises the risk of obesity in children. But the researchers’ estimate relies on older data gathered in the late 1990s, according to Elaine Kolish, a spokesman for the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Since then, two of the largest fast food chains — Burger King and McDonald’s — and more than a dozen other packaged food companies have signed on to the council’s Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, she said, pledging to advertise only their healthier products to children under age 12. Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University ’s Rudd Center for Food Policy, said reliable estimates of television’s impact on childhood obesity are hard to calculate because of the many assumptions statisticians must make. Only three countries — Sweden, Norway and Finland — have banned commercial sponsorship of children’s programs, and study authors acknowledged that the chances of such a ban in the U. Read Childhood Obesity

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