Advertising Food Health Obesity Body Image Obesity Disordered Eating Prevalence of obesity is increasing dramatically in the US of overweight children has doubled in 20yrs Proportion of calories due to snacking has increased Continuing problems with body image and disordered eating 10 of middle school girls report vomiting and or using laxatives to lose weight Thin Body Ideal in the US Media Advertising images present a thin ideal for women They promote an ideal for men too What effects do these images have on teens Argument that advertising shapes what culture views as desirable conflates abnormal thinness with definitions of beauty ex ABC news story Upworthy posted PS process of girls body Correlations Studies Fashion Magazines Young Women Thomsen 2002 Survey 500 high school females Reaching fashion magazines was correlated with more disordered eating behaviors eg anorexia bulimia laxatives more body dissatisfaction media eating disorders can go either way media effect e d or e d watch media Naturalistic Experiment College women randomly assigned to a waiting room fashion magazines in one room news magazines in another After a brief wait they filled out a questionnaire Those in fashion magazines conditions reported more dissatisfaction with weight guilt associated with eating fear of getting fat viewing ads with male models led to more body dissatisfactions compared to just Effects of Fashion Magazines on Young Men Participants undergrad males Experiment 2 conditions random assignment 1 ads with males models product 2 ads with product alone Measured effects on body dissatisfaction pretest post test Results product ads Conclusions Advertising Solutions plays a contributing role in self images and disordered eating parents media literacy positive image campaigns role models example Dove Campaign On the other hand Prevalence of obesity is increasingly dramatically in US of overweight children has doubled in 20 yrs What is the role of advertising heavy TV viewing is correlated with obesity among the children the question is WHY watching a lot of TV no exercise junk food is advertised more Mechanisms linking TV Obesity Displacement of other activity 1 Decreased energy expenditure INACTIVITY 2 3 Increased calorie intake a TV viewing correlated with junk food consumption CONTENT Prevalence of Child overweight TV viewing Past 30 yrs GRAPH TV viewing hours stayed the same but obesity increases Content Analysis of TV ads targeting Children Kunkel Gantz 1992 Random sample of child oriented TV shoes NBC CBS ABC 2 independent stations USA Nickelodeon Results Most ads are toys junk food Study Food in McDonald s wrapper tastes better to kids 63 children age 3 5 Given a tray with 2 identical samples of various foods hamburger chicken nuggets fries milk juice carrots McDonald s wrappers cups Plain unmarked packaging 1 2 Asked about taste unmarked foods always lost the taste test even though they were the same food Food Advertising in Schools 70 of ads on Channel One are for food mostly gum soda fast food candy chips Vending Machine contracts Taco Bell sells in 3000 school cafeterias Pizza Hut 4500 Effects of Food Advertisements Young children accept ad claims as true Across a number of studies request more junk food requests for advertised foods in particular TV viewing correlated with calorie intake TV viewing correlated with nutrition knowledge
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