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TV Ads May Spur Snacking in Kids

AAP recommends against any screen time for children younger than 18 months and suggests no more than an hour a day for kids aged two to five.
AAP recommends against any screen time for children younger than 18 months and suggests no more than an hour a day for kids aged two to five.

Mindless snacking in front of the television set may start long before children know how to work the remote control, a US study suggests.

In an experiment with 60 kids aged two to five years, researchers focused on how advertising influences what’s known as eating in the absence of hunger.

They gave the children a healthy snack to make sure they had a full belly, and then sat the kids down to watch a TV program with ads for Bugles corn chips or for a department store.

All the kids had the corn chips and one other snack in front of them while they watched the show. Children who saw ads for the corn chips ate 127 calories on average, compared to just 97 calories for kids who didn’t see Bugles on the screen, researchers report in Pediatrics. “This is the first study to show that exposure to food ads cues immediate eating among younger children - even after they had a filling snack,” said lead study author Jennifer Emond of Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, Reuters reported.

“Young children average up to three hours of TV viewing a day,” Emond added by email. “If kids are exposed to food ads during that time, they may unconsciously over consume snacks which can lead to extra weight gain.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends against any screen time for children younger than 18 months and suggests no more than an hour a day for kids aged two to five in part to encourage language development, support healthy sleep habits and limit sedentary activity that can set preschoolers on a path toward obesity.

The type of TV program matters too. The AAP encourages educational programming like “Sesame Street” that can support language learning.

The findings should give parents a reason to limit children’s exposure to media that comes with advertising, said Dr. Julie Lumeng, a researcher at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Many children’s programs are now instead using product placement to advertise,” Lumeng added by email. “Parents should also pay attention to how product placement occurs in TV programs or other media their young children may be watching.”

Age two may be too young to understand how ads can influence behavior. “But parents can consider gradually introducing the power of advertising to young children as a strategy for helping them resist the effects of these ads,” Lumeng said. “Ultimately limiting the child’s exposure to the ads is the key strategy.”

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