ATLANTA -- A little less "I'm Lovin' It" could put a significant dent in
the problem of childhood obesity, suggests a new study that attempts to
measure the effect of TV fast-food ads.
A ban on such commercials would reduce the number of obese young
children by 18 percent, and the number of obese older kids by 14
percent, researchers found.
They also suggested that ending an advertising expense tax deduction for
fast-food restaurants could mean a slight reduction in childhood
obesity.
Some experts say it's the first national study to show fast-food TV
commercials have such a large effect on childhood obesity. A 2006
Institute of Medicine re****t suggested a link, but concluded proof was
lacking.
"Our study provides evidence of that link," said study co-author Michael
Grossman, an economics professor at City University of New York.
The study has im****tant implications for the effectiveness of regulating
TV advertising, said Lisa Powell, a researcher at the University of
Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Health Research and Policy. She was
not involved in the research but was familiar with it.
The percentage of U.S. children who are overweight or obese rose
steadily from the 1980s until recently, when it leveled off. About a
third of American kids are overweight or obese, according to Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
The causes of childhood obesity are complicated, but for years
researchers have been pondering the effects of TV advertising. Powell,
for example, found fast-food commercials account for as much as 23
percent of the food-related ads kids see on TV. Others have estimated
children see fast-food commercials tens of thousands of times a year.
The new study is based in part on several years of government survey
data from the late 1990s that involved in-person interviews with
thousands of U.S. families. The researchers also looked at information
about local stations in the 75 largest TV markets, including locally
seen fast-food commercials and the size of viewing audiences.
The researchers used a statistical test that presumes TV ads lead to
obesity but made calculations to address other influences such as income
and the number of nearby fast-food restaurants. They also took steps to
account for the possibility that some children may already have been
overweight and inactive regardless of their TV-watching habits.
The study is being published this month in the Journal of Law &
Economics. The authors, funded by a federal grant, included Grossman and
researchers from Lehigh University and Georgia State University.
The authors stopped short of advocating an advertising ban or
eliminating the advertising tax deduction.
Grossman said it's possible that some families benefit from advertising
by finding out what restaurants are nearby and what they're serving. "A
lot of people consume fast food in moderate amounts and it doesn't harm
their health," he said.
McDonald's Corp., the giant fast-food chain responsible for the widely
seen "I'm Lovin' It" ad campaign, referred questions about the study to
the National Council of Chain Restaurants. Officials with that
organization could not be reached Wednesday evening.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
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