TV Ads Promote Foods High in Sugar, Fat & Salt, Study Finds

Our nation’s children are sitting ducks. They’re being bombarded with food ads high in sugar, fat and salt, a new study found, a sad development we learned about from AFP.

Of course, we already knew about this appalling advertising phenomenom, but this new long-term study from University of Chicago researchers — which was published in Pediatrics — examined nearly 100,000 thirty-second ads for foods (including breakfast cereals, snacks, sweets and drinks) aired on TV during programs popular with two-to 17-year-olds.

Their findings: A whopping 97.8 percent of the food product ads kids aged two to 11 were high in fat, sugar and sodium or
salt.

And for the older 12-to-17-year-old age group, 90 percent of ads targeting them were for foods of poor nutritional quality,
the study found.

This new study could really fuel the debate about marketing to children, as AdAge.com pointed.

Let’s hope it does some good!