ResearchResearch and Practice InnovationNutritional Imbalance Endorsed by Televised Food Advertisements
Section snippets
Study Design
This study used a nonexperimental, cross-sectional design that involved both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the nutritional content of foods advertised on American television. The design of this study included the following innovations: focusing exclusively on advertisements because they are specifically constructed to influence purchasing behavior; using serving sizes instead of food items as the unit of analysis; limiting serving categories to the food groups of the Food
Summary Statistics
During the 28 consecutive days, 96 hours of television broadcast were recorded on videotape. Two of the 96 hours were taped improperly and 4.5 were free of advertisements (presidential and vice-presidential debates), leaving 89.5 hours for viewing. Reviews of the videotapes identified 3,584 total advertisements, 614 food advertisements (17% of total), and 831 food-item endorsements. There were no nutritional data available in Nutritionist Pro for 56 (7%) of the 831 observed foods, leaving 775
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to compare the nutritional content of food choices endorsed on television to established nutrition guidelines. Findings suggest that a diet of foods advertised on American television would fail to comply with recommendations of both the Food Guide Pyramid and Daily Values. The average food item in this study provided too many servings of sugars, fat, and meat, and too few servings of dairy, fruits, and vegetables. These foods also oversupplied eight essential
Conclusion
The results of this study suggest the foods advertised on television tend to oversupply nutrients associated with chronic illness (eg, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium) and undersupply nutrients that help protect against illness (eg, fiber, vitamins A, E, and D, calcium, and potassium). Although this study did not attempt to assess appropriate response to this bias for advertising unhealthful food selections, the authors recommend investigating health-promotion strategies that target
M. Mink is an assistant professor and MPH program coordinator, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, GA
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2019, Ecological EconomicsCitation Excerpt :Therefore, the possible effect of the season was not taken into account. Additionally, the data was also usually recorded only at certain times of day, e.g. prime time and/or weekend mornings (Dickinson, 2000; Chapman et al., 2006; Mink et al., 2010; Pettigrew et al., 2012). In this study, to ensure a representative selection of advertisements, 24 h of television broadcasting a day were recorded from each of the two channels for a period of 12 months.
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2016, Journal of Pediatric NursingCitation Excerpt :Furthermore, the term misperception seems to indicate an etiologic factor for nutritional imbalance, suggesting that more people are needed to find lower costing and higher quantities of food. Often, cheap foods can represent lower nutritional quality and/or compositions rich in carbohydrates and poor in other nutrients (Mink, Evans, Moore, Calderon, & Deger, 2010). Unfortunately, these foods produce a feeling of satiety, inducing a belief of being well fed.
M. Mink is an assistant professor and MPH program coordinator, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, GA
A. Evans is associate professor, University of Texas School of Public Health, Austin
C. G. Moore is associate professor of medicine, Center for Research on Health Care Data Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
K. S. Calderon is director of collaborative grants, MedXcel, Tampa, FL
S. Deger is a DrPH student, University of Hawaii, Honolulu