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By Zoe Taylor
January 03, 2008 09:10am
Article from: The Australian
The results of my childhood obesity study at a Central Coast swimming pool this week are conclusive.
Fat kids outnumbered their healthier peers by about two to one. And we are talking fat.
Take the nine-year-old girl who could barely abandon her chips long enough to get wet, while enormo-mum sat poolside and dad dispersed gigalitres with his bombing antics.
You feel sorry for the kid, oblivious to the health implications of her over-stretched swimmers. But her parents? No sympathy.
And you have to wonder what would make a difference to a family like this. A ban on junk food advertising would probably not have much impact.
About 30 per cent of all ads in kids' viewing time are for food or drinks. Most of this is for junk food; high in fat, salt and sugar. We are in the midst of an epidemic - with at least one in four kids and half of adults overweight or obese.
Families are getting fatter and watching more TV. The average family home in Australia has almost three televisions, three mobile phones, two computers, two DVD players and a video-game console. And one in five children has a TV in their bedroom - more than double that of 10 years ago.
The nature of advertising has also changed. There is a circa 1970 KFC ad on YouTube which would cause outrage if it were aired today.
Perhaps more honestly, it features two cartoon kids who are clearly, and proudly, displaying the size of girth that over-indulgence in junk food can contribute to. Hugo and Holly even argue about which of them will haul their overweight butts out of their dad's car to fetch the fried chicken.
But serious doubts remain about whether an advertising ban now would reverse the trend.
New Zealand researchers, who studied 1000 children in 2004, claimed to have found a link between kids who watched more than two hours of TV a day and higher levels of obesity, blood cholesterol and smoking as well as a lower level of fitness in adulthood.
But food advertising to children was banned in Quebec and Sweden 25 and 12 years ago respectively, without any appreciable impact on obesity rates.
The question remains whether kids are getting fatter because they are inactive or because of what they are watching while sitting on the couch.
Perhaps the truth contains a mixture of the two.
While adults are capable to discerning advertising for what it is, the same is not true for young children.
But the big bottom line is that parents will remain the biggest influence on their kids. If they are overweight, lazy and eating junk, what chance do their children have?
January 03, 2008 09:10am
Article from: The Australian
The results of my childhood obesity study at a Central Coast swimming pool this week are conclusive.
Fat kids outnumbered their healthier peers by about two to one. And we are talking fat.
Take the nine-year-old girl who could barely abandon her chips long enough to get wet, while enormo-mum sat poolside and dad dispersed gigalitres with his bombing antics.
You feel sorry for the kid, oblivious to the health implications of her over-stretched swimmers. But her parents? No sympathy.
And you have to wonder what would make a difference to a family like this. A ban on junk food advertising would probably not have much impact.
About 30 per cent of all ads in kids' viewing time are for food or drinks. Most of this is for junk food; high in fat, salt and sugar. We are in the midst of an epidemic - with at least one in four kids and half of adults overweight or obese.
Families are getting fatter and watching more TV. The average family home in Australia has almost three televisions, three mobile phones, two computers, two DVD players and a video-game console. And one in five children has a TV in their bedroom - more than double that of 10 years ago.
The nature of advertising has also changed. There is a circa 1970 KFC ad on YouTube which would cause outrage if it were aired today.
Perhaps more honestly, it features two cartoon kids who are clearly, and proudly, displaying the size of girth that over-indulgence in junk food can contribute to. Hugo and Holly even argue about which of them will haul their overweight butts out of their dad's car to fetch the fried chicken.
But serious doubts remain about whether an advertising ban now would reverse the trend.
New Zealand researchers, who studied 1000 children in 2004, claimed to have found a link between kids who watched more than two hours of TV a day and higher levels of obesity, blood cholesterol and smoking as well as a lower level of fitness in adulthood.
But food advertising to children was banned in Quebec and Sweden 25 and 12 years ago respectively, without any appreciable impact on obesity rates.
The question remains whether kids are getting fatter because they are inactive or because of what they are watching while sitting on the couch.
Perhaps the truth contains a mixture of the two.
While adults are capable to discerning advertising for what it is, the same is not true for young children.
But the big bottom line is that parents will remain the biggest influence on their kids. If they are overweight, lazy and eating junk, what chance do their children have?
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