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Nutritional Imbalance Endorsed by Televised Food Advertisements

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Abstract

The ubiquity of television in American culture makes it a potential contributor to the obesogenic (obesity-causing) environment. Televised food advertisements, which encourage viewers to eat the foods promoted for sale, constitute a de facto set of dietary endorsements. The purpose of this study was to compare the nutritional content of food choices endorsed on television to nutritional guidelines. Using a cross-sectional design, food advertisements were observed during 84 hours of primetime and 12 hours of Saturday-morning televised broadcast during the fall of 2004. One-sample t tests were used to compare the food group servings of observed food items to the recommended daily servings and to compare the nutrient content of observed food items to the Daily Values. Results suggest that a diet consisting of observed food items would provide 2,560% of the recommended daily servings for sugars, 2,080% of the recommended daily servings for fat, 40% of the recommended daily servings for vegetables, 32% of the recommended daily servings for dairy, and 27% of the recommended daily servings for fruits. The same diet would substantially oversupply protein, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium, while substantially undersupplying carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins A, E, and D, pantothenic acid, iron, phosphorous, calcium, magnesium, copper, and potassium. Overall, the food choices endorsed on television fail to meet nutrition guidelines and encourage nutritional imbalance.

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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    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

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