Is your child addicted to junk food? Blame it on the junk food advertising which has a significant impact on a child's psyche. The plethora of advertisements that are often directed to your child, which in turn is luring more and more children towards junk food, claims a latest study published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health. The healthy advertisements were found to be much lesser in number.
The University of Adelaide study showed that children were exposed to twice as much unhealthy food advertising as healthy food ones.
"This is the most robust data we've seen anywhere. It is the largest dataset ever used by health researchers for examining food advertising in Australia, and probably the world. Most research in this area is based on only a few days of data, and there are no Australian studies taking seasonality into account," said researcher Lisa Smithers.
It was also revealed that most parents often found themselves unaware of the fact that consuming fattening junk food could be addictive for children and led to complications like obesity and chronic illness.
The study revealed that snack foods, crumbed/battered meats, takeaway/fast food and sugary drinks were among the most frequently advertised foods. It was also noted that during children's peak viewing times, the frequency and duration of "discretionary" food advertising were noted to be higher.
(With Inputs ANI)