Frequency and Types of Foods

Advertised on Saturday
Morning and Weekday
Afternoon English- and
Spanish-Language American
Television Programs
Oi Yi Chan
Bell RA, Cassady D, Culp J, Alcalay R
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 2009
doi:10.1016/j.jneb.2008.05.008

Overview
Background
Purpose and Hypothesis
Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusions

Background
A research done by UC Davis faculty: Department of
Communication and Public Health Sciences
Amount of time spent watching television correlates positively
with childrens BMI (Janssen K. Obes Rev. 2005)
Watching TV a sedentary activity that encourage :
Consumption of high-energy foods and beverages
Increase meal frequency
Promote fast-food use
Lower fruit and vegetable consumption

Background
TV affect viewers nutritional decisions through messages
embedded in entertainment programs
Character usually eating unhealthy snacks

Background
There is no evidence of studies relating to food advertising on
Spanish-language American programming.
However, obesity rates are very high among Hispanic-Americans
9 out of 10 Hispanic-Americans use Spanish language media

Purpose
To describe food advertised on networks serving children and
youth, and to compare ads on English-language networks with
ads on Spanish networks.

Hypothesis
1. Food ads constitute deliberate attempts to encourage eating
and alter food choices
2. Children are susceptible to advertisements, and often fail to
comprehend marketers promotional intentions
3. Food industry devotes most of its marketing dollars to
television campaigns
4. Advertisements appearing in programming for children likely
to promote food high in sugar, fat, or sodium

Methods
Observation of 12 networks on the time intervals of Weekdays
afternoon (3-6PM) and Saturday morning (7-10AM)
Both childrens cable channels and older youth networks
those tended to target children and youth
Videotaping were randomly selected to create 1 week of
programming for each channel
Final sample consisted of 216 hours (12 networks X 18 hour
long time slots)

Methods
Coding decision for each advertisement were recorded on a
separate form that included info about the program, network,
time slot, language and the form of promotion
Food related promotion further coded into different food
categories.

Statistical Analyses
Carried out using Stata
Cross-tabulations using Fishers exact test with P < 0.05
criterion

Results

1130 food related commercials

English and Spanish language
commercials did not differ
More likely to be for food when
Saturday

Results

28.4% fast food restaurants

15.5% cereal
(90% were sugar added)

70.5% of the promotions

were high fat or sugar
content

Discussion
1 in 5 advertisements was food related
5.2 food advertisements presented every hour
Fast food restaurants, sugary food, chips/crackers, and sugar
added beverages promotions were more than 70%
Even children move into adolescence, they continue to be
exposed to advertisements for less healthy food

Networks fro children contain a greater proportion of

advertising for food, compared to general audience

Discussion
Commercials on Spanish language general audience networks
were more likely to be for alcohol and fast food restaurants
Suggest increasingly obese in Hispanic American

Limitations
The content analysis can describe the nature of food
advertising, but not its effects.
Effects on audience is unknown

Selected programming which children and adolescent are

likely to be watching
Other time periods were not included

Did not undertake an analysis of the specific nutritional

content of the advertised food

Conclusion
Reduced childrens media use
Introduce media literacy training into
nutrition programs: help children and
youth understand economic
motivations behind advertisements