November 9th
The relationship between television viewing and unhealthy eating: Implications for children and media interventions.
It’s so sad to know how much TV advertisments can influence what we eat especially for children. “Humans possess an innate preference for sweet, high-fat and salty foods, and a reluctance to try unfamiliar foods, however, early experiences are critical in shaping individual food preferences”(pg 2). I do not believe TV advertisments should take the full blame for the increase in child obesity because children do not have full control of what they eat. Parents can help influence healthy foods from the beginning because they can literally control what their children eat. What if children never tasted junk food? Would they still crave it?
When children start to develop their own food preferences they do so mostly from past food experiences. In additon, TV advertisments that encourage junk food also help influence unhealthy decisions. When children are sitting at home watching fast food advertisments on TV they may crave what they are watching because the advertisments do a pretty good job in selling their products. For example, the study in this article shared how children had higher ratings for certain foods after watching an advertisment about it compared to those who didn’t watch an advertisment. This study only proves how important media literacy is for children especially because of the impact advertisments have on children’s health.
What’s a good solution for this problem?
Media literacy can be extremly helpful for children to help them understand advertisments about unhealthy foods. However, I agree most with the solution of parent-child communication. From personal experience, my parents would sometimes critize TV adverisments by pointing out the facts about them. In fact, when I watchTV advertisments today I am very skeptical because my parents influenced me to not believe everything we see on TV. Moreover, like the article mentioned this type of communication could have some negative or positive impacts on children. What solution would be best?
