Adolescent Exposure to Food Advertising on Television

doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2007.07.009

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Volume 33, Issue 4, Supplement, October 2007, Pages S251-S256

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2007.07.009 Get rights and content

Background

Television viewing is hypothesized to contribute to obesity among children and adolescents through several mechanisms that include the displacement of physical activity, snacking while watching TV, and the influence of food advertising.

Methods

Results

The results showed that among total nonprogram content time, food-related products accounted for roughly one fifth of advertising exposure. Excluding TV promotions and public service announcements, as a proportion of all product advertising, total food-related advertising made up 26% of advertised products viewed by adolescents. By race, the proportion of advertising exposure to food products was 14% greater for African-American versus white adolescents and total exposure to food advertising would be even larger for African-American teens given that, on average, they watched more TV. Fast food was the most frequently viewed food product category comprising 23% of all food-related advertisements among adolescents.

Conclusions

Food ads made up just over one quarter of TV ads viewed by adolescents with the most commonly viewed products of fast food, sweets, and beverage products well within the reach of their own purchasing power.

Introduction

American adolescents are often overweight, fail to meet dietary recommendations, and watch several hours of television (TV) per day. Obesity rates (age- and gender-specific body mass index [BMI]≥95th percentile) among American adolescents aged 12 through 19 reached 17.4 % in 2003–2004. By race, obesity rates were 21.8% among non-Hispanic African-American youths, 16.3% among Mexican Americans, and 17.3% among non-Hispanic white adolescents.¹ Further, a number of studies suggested that American youths consume too much dietary fat and sugar and that fruit and vegetable consumption and micronutrient intake is low compared with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) dietary recommendations.2, 3, 4, 5

Adolescents were estimated to watch on average just over 3 hours of television per day in 2004–2005.6, 7 The amount of TV viewing among adolescents was found to differ by race. Among a sample of children and teenagers aged 8–18 years, African-American youths were found to spend 48% more time watching TV daily compared to their white counterparts.⁶ African-American teens aged 12–17 watched on average approximately 40% more TV during prime-time hours and approximately 95% more TV during the daytime (Monday–Friday, 10 am–4:30 pm) compared to nonblack youths.⁸ In addition, programming choices in African-American households also were distinct to those among non-African-American audiences.⁸

Poor dietary practices and related overweight among adolescents begs the question as to whether exposure to TV food advertising may be a contributing factor to these outcomes. This was the key focus of the recent Institute of Medicine⁹ report that provided a comprehensive examination of food advertising to children and youth. The report concluded that there is strong evidence for children aged 2–11 that television advertising influenced short-term food consumption patterns and moderate evidence that it influenced usual dietary intake, but there was insufficient corresponding evidence for teens aged 12–18. With respect to health, the report concluded that there was strong evidence for both children aged 2–11 and adolescents aged 12–18 that exposure to television advertising was significantly associated with adiposity.⁹ However, assessing a causal relationship between exposure to food advertising and obesity is difficult. Television viewing is hypothesized to contribute to obesity among children and adolescents through several mechanisms that include the displacement of physical activity, snacking while watching TV, and the influence of food advertising. Thus it is difficult to quantify the effect of advertising on obesity because of its interrelatedness with sedentary activity and snacking while watching. TV viewing itself also may be endogenous to youth overweight and cross-sectional studies are unable to determine causality.¹⁰ Several studies have linked television viewing with obesity among adolescents,11, 12, 13, 14 but have not disentangled the causal pathways.

No study to date has examined the content of advertising exposure specifically among adolescents, but several have done so for children. Assessing the extent of food advertising and the types of food products advertised on children’s programming, a number of content analyses of advertisements have focused primarily on Saturday morning programming15, 16, 17 with other analyses incorporating afternoon and primetime viewing hours18, 19, 20 and one study to date has used ratings data for children aged 2–11.²¹ These studies found that the proportion of food advertising ranged from 27% to 58% of total nonprogram content time and 36% to 71% of product advertising time.15, 16, 17, 19, 21 The proportion of food advertising for cereal ranged from 28% to 49% and the proportion for candy and snacks ranged from 21% to 34%.15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21 Estimates of the distribution of food advertising among children aged 6–11 years found 15% of ads to be for cereal and bread with estimates for candy/sweets and soft drinks at 44%.²⁰ A recent study focused its content analyses on differences in food advertisements aired on predominantly African-American versus general audience television stations during after-school programming and found statistically significantly more food and beverage commercials aired on Black Entertainment Television (BET) compared to Warner Brothers (WB) and the Disney Channel.²² Other studies have also found a higher proportion of food advertising on African-American versus general audience primetime programming.23, 24

This study drew on television ratings to examine the distribution of food advertising exposure among adolescents aged 12 through 17 based on 170 top-rated shows across network, cable and syndicated TV stations over the 9-month period from September 2003 to May 2004. A total of 238,353 30-second equivalent advertisements on the top-rated shows were assessed. To examine differences in exposure to food advertising by race, we similarly assessed a total of 267,189 advertisements on the top-rated shows among white adolescents and a total of 253,885 advertisements on the top-rated shows among African-American teens aged 12–17. Using ratings data for each commercial, the distribution of exposure to nonprogram content time was classified across six mutually exclusive categories that include: (1) food products, (2) restaurants, (3) fast food, (4) other (non-food) products, (5) public service announcements (PSAs), and (6) TV promotions. The distribution of exposure to total food-related advertising was then examined across seven broad food categories and at a more disaggregated level highlighting the distribution rates for the top 25 food product categories.

Section snippets

Methods

Television show ratings from Nielsen Media Research (NMR) for adolescents aged 12 through 17 years were used to select the following top-rated youth programming: (1) the 60 top-rated broadcast network series shows; (2) the 60 top-rated cable network series shows; (3) the 30 top-rated syndicated series shows; (4) the 10 top-rated broadcast network specials; and, (5) the 10 top-rated cable network specials. Based on this programming selection, we acquired monthly ratings from NMR on every

Results

The distribution of nonprogram content time exposure among the mutually exclusive categories of food products, non–fast-food restaurants and fast-food restaurants, other product advertising, PSAs, and TV promotions for adolescents aged 12–17 along with separate exposure estimates for African-American and white adolescents are shown in Table 1. These data revealed that approximately one fifth (19.6%) of all national nonprogram content time exposure for adolescents aged 12–17 (20.4% for

Discussion

This study presented the first content analyses of television advertising viewed by American adolescents. Based on television ratings for adolescents aged 12 through 17, the results showed that among total non-program content time, food-related products accounted for roughly one fifth of advertising exposure, while TV promotions made up just over another one fifth of all ads. Excluding TV promotions and PSAs, as a proportion of all product advertising, total food-related advertising made up

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60 healthy, overweight, non-restrictive eating adults (20 females) took part in a food wanting and subsequent food recognition and lure discrimination task at four time points after a standardized breakfast shake. With advanced tractography of 3 T diffusion-weighted imaging data, we investigated the influence of the uncinate fasciculus’ (UF) brain microstructure on the interplay of food wanting and memory processes. The analysis was preregistered in detail and conducted with Bayesian multilevel regression modeling.
Target recognition (d’) and lure discrimination (LDI) performance of food tended to be higher than of art images while single image food memory accuracy evidently dominated art memory. On this single item level, wanting enhanced recognition accuracy and caloric content enhanced food memory accuracy. The enhancement by reward anticipation was most pronounced during memory encoding. Subjective hunger level did not predict performance on the memory task. The microstructure of the UF did neither evidently affect memory performance outcomes nor moderate the wanting enhancement of the recognition accuracy. Interestingly, female participants outperformed males on the memory task, and individuals with stronger neuroticism showed poorer memory performance.
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For the two components of the attitudinal outcome, Black participants were more likely to report a positive affective response toward racially-similar ads compared to Whites. However, White participants were more likely to like ads that were racially-dissimilar compared to Black participants. Data were analyzed in 2016–2017, and we used an alpha level of 0.05 to denote statistical significance.
Both Black and White adolescents reported more positive affective responses to ads that featured Blacks compared to ads that featured Whites. Because there were no differences on two outcomes, future research should examine the influence of racially-targeted marketing in real-world contexts (e.g., social media) and longitudinal exposure to targeted advertising on dietary behavior.
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People are exposed to many food stimuli every day, which impacts purchase as well as dietary behavior. Substantial research has been conducted in the area of visual attention to different food cues to better understand coherences in visual attention to food stimuli, linked cognitive processes and decision making. However, the possible influence of the presentation of different types of food cues has often been ignored.
The main aim of the study was to address the effect of different types of food stimuli varying in calories and convenience onto visual attention. Participants (N = 50) were invited in a free exploration task to view a series of food pictures displayed on the wall via a projector while wearing a mobile eye-tracking device. A sequence of 30 picture trials was presented for 3000 ms showing a random side-by-side presentation of high and low calorie food pictures. Eye movements were recorded at 50 Hz. Attention was measured by fixation duration, fixation counts, and visit counts. T-tests and repeated measures ANOVAs were used to compare the different types of food stimuli presented.
The results showed that especially cut up, ready-to-eat low calorie food tended to arouse people’s visual attention compared to unprepared low calorie food and both savory and sweet high calorie food. Furthermore, men paid more attention to high calorie and women more attention to low calorie food cues. The findings suggest that people’s attention varies depending on the type of food stimuli presented. Men and women appear to focus their attention on different types of food stimuli. Implications can be seen for food marketing and health care promotion campaigns.
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Community, state, and other environmental issueAdolescent Exposure to Food Advertising on Television

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Introduction

Section snippets

Methods

Results

Discussion

J Am Diet Assoc

Prev Med

J Nutr Educ

J Am Diet Assoc

J Nutr Educ Behav

Appetite

Prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States, 1999–2004

JAMA

American children’s diets not making the grade

Food Review

Fruit and vegetable intake and weight-control behaviors among US youth

Am J Health Behav

Generation M: Media in the lives of 8–18 year olds

2000 Report on Television

Food marketing to children and youth: threat or opportunity?

Does television cause childhood obesity?

JAMA

Do we fatten our children at the television set?Obesity and television viewing in children and adolescents

Pediatrics

Television viewing as a cause of increasing obesity among children in the United States, 1986–1990

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med

Relationship of physical activity and television watching with body weight and level of fatness among children: results from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

JAMA

Community, state, and other environmental issue
Adolescent Exposure to Food Advertising on Television