Bad Ads

A study recently released by researchers from Lehigh University calls for something pundits consider “controversial” and “impractical”: the banning of fast food commercials from television. Call me crazy, but I don’t consider it all that controversial. In fact, I call it downright level-headed.

To do such a thing wouldn’t set a precedent. Norway, Sweden and Finland have already instituted bans and based on study done by researchers from Dalhousie University, Norwegian children are much less likely to be obese than American or Canadian children. And the same couldn’t be said for Finnish folk in the 80s, the same can be said today, as reported by the BBC in their 2004 piece “Fighting Fat the Finnish Way.”

Whether this is a coincidence or not is subject for debate, but in my mind, they’re quite likely linked. I say this not only based on my own observations, but also based on statistical analysis done by researchers from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. After poring over data collected regarding children and the average number of media images they see (data that extended back to 1971 of 13,000 children), particularly fast-food images, researchers believe a ban would result in the number of obese children dropping nearly 20 percent!

As has been documented here and virtually any outlet that delivers news, the rate of obesity has been rising steadily for a long time now. So too have the average number of commercials the average tike sees. The National Institute of Health cited a study conducted in 2006 that showed the number of commercials viewed by children jumped by about 10,000 ads per decade. For instance, the typical child saw about 20,000 commercials in a given year back in the 1970s. That rate jumped to about 40,000 commercials in the 90s. And as anyone who watches even a little TV can tell you, fast food commercials are as all pervasive as car commercials.

Now, should such a ban be put in place, cries of the U.S becoming a “nanny state” will no doubt rain down upon the populace. But one has to consider the impact media messages have on developing brains that soak up information like sponges. Thankfully, many moms and dads are careful about their children and what information they take in, knowing that Burger King and the like are part and parcel for the overwhelming rates of obesity in the country and the world (the World Health Organization estimates that 300 million people on earth are dangerously overweight – that’s the entire U.S. population!). But “many” moms and dads is not sufficient – not when a third of children are obese.

For this reason, and based on the good researchers’ analysis, I believe it’s in our kids’ short and long term health interest that fast food commercialization be banned from television.

Commercials promoting cigarettes were banned way back in 1971, a banning that was well-justified due to the scores of lives cigarettes have claimed before and since the ban. According to a 2004 report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity claims almost as many lives as cigarette smoking does. In 2000, for instance, 435,000 people died from cigarette smoking in the U.S. – that’s almost 20 percent of everyone who died in 2000, making it the leading cause of death. What was the second-leading cause of death that year? Obesity. About 400,000 people died from complications associated with obesity, or about 16 percent of everyone who died!

No one questions the propriety of banning cigarette ads; it’s no doubt saved hundreds of thousands of lives that likely would have been lost had there been no such ban. Based on the number of people that have died from obesity already, is it really that controversial to call for the banning of fast food ads as well?