Young children are bombarded with junk food content in their favorite TV shows including Paw Patrol, Teletubbies and Firefighter Sam, study found
- To see unhealthy foods on TV related to bad eating habits and obesity in children
- Nottingham University research finds junk food is ‘common’ on toddler TV
- Netflix and Amazon Prime have seen junk food in 72% of children’s TV episodes
- On CBeebies, it appeared in 26% of episodes, but only 11% on C5’s Milkshake!
- Dr Alex Barker urged the government to go ahead with the planned ban on junk food advertising before 9pm
Children are bombarded with junk food content on their favorite TV shows, a study has revealed.
Exposure to images of foods high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) has been linked to poor eating habits and obesity in younger people.
Researchers have now found that such foods are ‘common’ in programs aimed at children who have not even started school.
The study, led by a team from the University of Nottingham, analyzed three days of children’s programs on UK television and on-demand services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime in 2019.
This included people like Paw Patrol, Firefighter Sam, Teletubbies and Bing. The team recorded every time food such as sweets, sugary cereals and chips appeared on the screen, were mentioned in dialogue or appeared in characters’ names.
Exposure to images of foods high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) has been linked to poor eating habits and obesity in younger people. Netflix and Amazon Prime show much more junk food in kids TV compared to CBeebies and Channel 5’s Milkshake!
They found that over Netflix and Amazon Prime, fatty, sweet and salty content appeared in 72 percent of episodes and in 19 percent of intervals.
On CBeebies, such foods appeared in 26 percent of episodes and ad breaks.
In the weekly morning television slot on Channel 5 called Milkshake !, HFSS content appeared in 11 percent of programs and commercial breaks, with the exception of reports of ‘Milkshake’ itself.
The researchers wrote in the Journal of Public Health: ‘The UK is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Food choices in children are influenced by a range of factors, including exposure to depictions of HFSS food in the media.
“It is widely acknowledged that children learn through perceived behavior – this has already been demonstrated in alcohol and tobacco use.”
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Dr Alex Barker, first author of the study, said: ‘We chose to watch programs aimed at very young children, and what we found was quite shocking. The thing that kept appearing with us was sweets – sweets, cookies, cakes and ice cream. Young people look at this, they then want that junk food, go eat it and become obese and have all kinds of health problems.
“There must be a responsibility on the part of the programmers and there must be legislation in place to prevent it.”
The researchers added that children who see unhealthy foods can beg parents for them – so-called ‘pessmag’.
To date, most HFSS content research has focused on advertising – suggesting that brands can exploit a ‘harmful loophole’ to contain junk food in programs, the researchers said. The team encouraged regulator Ofcom to step in.
“We also want to urge the Department of Health and Social Care to consider whether the current plan to ban ‘junk food’ advertising before the 21:00 watershed goes far enough,” they wrote.
‘The thing that kept appearing to us was sweets – sweets, cookies, cakes and ice cream. Young people look at this, they want that junk food, go eat it and become obese and have all kinds of health problems, ‘says Dr Alex Barker, the first author of the study
About one in four British adults, and more than one in five children in their final year of primary school, are obese. Young people who are obese typically become adults with obesity, the researchers added.
Michelle Mitchell, CEO of Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, said the results showed ‘the need to regulate junk food marketing to tackle … obesity, the second biggest preventable cause of cancer’.
Spokesmen for both Channel 5 and CBeebies each said they were ‘proud’ of content that drives ‘health-eating’ and ‘active lifestyles’.