Advertising of junk food and obesity are re-related in this study
The obesity It is one of the biggest problems facing today's society. It is said to be the great epidemic of the 21st century, especially in the case of the younger generations. Part of the blame is the junk food, menus with a high caloric content, more tasty and with a great publicity that makes them attractive to the eyes of children.
In case there are doubts about how advertising influences the behavior of children, a new study conducted by Cancer Research UK and that has been published in the European Obesity Congress Re-link exposure to these ads with increased consumption of junk food.
Advertising and obesity
A total of 3,300 young people from between 11 and 19 years participated in this study conducted in the United Kingdom. On the one hand, the researchers asked about the amount of advertising of junk food that they visualized throughout the day, on the other the number of these foods that they ingested in each day. The objective was to establish a link between the calories and the advertisements to which they were exposed.
The established average was 6 ads per child. Those young people who saw a spot of more, consumed an additional 350 calories a week in the form of foods with high content of salt, sugar and fat. The annual figures left 18,000 additional calories.
Some facts that resulted in increased risk of obesity and other problems. As explained Jyotsna Vohra, head of the Cancer Research Research Center at Cancer Research UK, junk food advertising is linked to at least 13 types of cancer.
Make healthy food more attractive
Since the consumption of junk food is related to advertising that makes it attractive and with a more tasty, Why not repeat this technique with foods that are understood as healthy? The University of Chicago highlights the benefits of improving the image of these menus with a strong presence of these products.
On the one hand, a group of children were offered some "delicious new cookies", on the other a "healthy" food. The researchers detected that the minors opted for the first articles thanks to the adjectives that accompanied the "cookie" shovel. On the contrary, the qualifier "healthy" is usually related to something not very tasty, the key is to present them as something completely different.
Damián Montero
