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Can Banning of Fast Food Ads Reduce Obesity? Childhood obesity has been a tricky problem for governments around the world. If they do not handle such issue properly, many of these obese children may end up later in their life with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) and many other medical ailments. This definitely will impose tremendous pressure on the health expenditure on the respective governments. The percentage of obese or overweight children in United States rose steadily since 1980s until recently, when it leveled off. According to United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are about a third of American kids are obese or overweight. The causes of childhood obesity might be complicated. However, inactive lifestyle and unhealthy diet have been identified as the possible reasons for such an epidemic. Children like to watch television programs, playing computer games, and meanwhile fond of eating fast food. For years, researchers have also considering and studying the effect of television advertising. Some experts found that fast food commercials account for as much as 23 percent of the food-related advertisements kids watch on television while others have estimated children actually witness fast food commercials tens of thousands of times a year.
Researchers from City University of New York and Lehigh University and Georgia State University pointed out in their latest study that banning on fast food commercials would reduce the number of obese young children by 18 percent and the number of obese older kids by 14 percent. The findings, published during November 2008 in the Journal of Law & Economics, also indicated that ending an advertising expense tax deduction for fast food restaurants could slightly reduce childhood obesity. In 2006, the Institute of Medicine did suggest a link but without any concluded proof. In comparison, this latest study, which was funded by a federal grant, provided evidence of that link. As such, some experts in the field regarded this as the first national study to show fast food television commercials have such a huge impact on childhood obesity. Meanwhile, some experts also felt that the study has important implications for the effectiveness of regulating TV advertising. Besides using several years of government survey data from the late 1990s, which involved in-person interviews with thousands of American families, the researchers also examined the information about local stations in the 75 largest television markets, including locally seen fast food commercials and the size of viewing audiences. A statistical test that presumes television advertisements lead to obesity was used but calculations were then made to include other influences like income and number of nearby fast food restaurants. In the meantime, possibility that some children might already have been overweight and inactive regardless of their television-watching habits was also being considered and accounted for. Nevertheless, the authors of the study stopped short of advocating an advertising ban or eliminating the advertising tax deduction.
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