Restricting Advertisements for High-Fat, High-Sugar Foods during Children's Television Programs: Attitudes in a US Population-Based Sample

Abstract

The US adult population appears to have an appetite for restricting HFHS advertising to children, with more than half the populace supporting such a policy in 2012. This may be an opportune time to implement and rigorously evaluate such childhood obesity prevention strategies.

Race, Ethnicity, and Other Factors Predicting U.S. Parents' Support for Policies to Reduce Food and Beverage Marketing to Children and Adolescents

“… 26–29 Furthermore, findings on differences in support by income, race, and ethnicity have been inconsistent 26 , 27 , 30 or inconclusive due to limited sociodemographic diversity in the sample. 31 In addition, previous cross-sectional studies have not examined how sociodemographic characteristics interact as predictors of support. Finally, the majority of research in this area has measured attitudes of U.S. adults, 27–29 , 31 not parents specifically.…”

Public and parental perceptions of and concerns with advertising to preschool children

“…While this gender balance is not unusual in studies eliciting parental attitudes towards children, it would be useful for further studies to include both a wider range of socio‐economic groups and a more diverse sample of family types. Interestingly, while the present study shows a relationship between higher levels of education and higher levels of concern with advertising, previous research (Feldman et al ., ; Laczniak et al ., ; Tripicchio et al ., ) suggests that this is not the case. The significance of the educational level of respondents remains a topic for future research and has implications for the interpretation of the results presented in study two.…”

“…Empirically, such agreement is also evident in the findings of an earlier European study that showed parents in three countries (723 in total) were concerned about advertising directed at children and agreed that young children were deceived by advertisements more easily than adults (Tziortzi, ). Such concerns were also identified in a more recent large scale American study where nearly 60% of respondents agreed that, in general, advertising to children should be restricted (Tripicchio et al ., ) and that, in particular, this should be a priority for children of certain ethnic groups and low income families (Powell et al ., ).…”

“…This research, and increasing focus on young children as a television target audience, has re-ignited concerns about the influence television advertising may have on them (Gunter et al, 2005). Studies have indicated strong and internationally widespread negative perceptions of advertising to children (Walsh et al, 1998;Bandyopadhyay et al, 2001;Young et al, 2003;Oates et al, 2014;Tripicchio et al, 2016). Key concerns tend to cluster around a number of issues, mainly the amount of advertising children are exposed to, and the nature of its appeals, and its role in promoting specific products which parents view as inappropriate (Blades et al, 2014).…”

“…Internationally, concern is mounting that the commercialisation of childhood is beginning earlier and becoming more pervasive (Kunkel et al, 2004;Bailey, 2011;Blades et al, 2014) particularly in light of the growing number of new digital media sources directly advertising to children (Clarke and Svanaes, 2012;Owen et al, 2013). However, despite recent and continuing changes in children's media environment and their growing use of electronic media, television remains the most prominent way of advertising to them (Oates et al, 2015;Tripicchio et al, 2016). This is especially true for younger viewers; with 3-to 4-year olds spending more than twice as much time per week (14 h) watching television compared to online media (6 h) (Ofcom, 2014).…”