Proof that sugary cereal TV adverts ARE fuelling child obesity
CHILDREN who watch just 20 television adverts a week for sugary breakfast cereals eat a staggering 30 per cent more of them than those who see none, new research has revealed.
Parents and health experts have long been concerned about the impact of repeated adverts for cereal and other high-sugar foods on youngsters’ eating habits.
Scientists found that for every ten cereal commercials a child under the age of five watched weekly, their consumption of the products jumped by almost 15 per cent.
And young children viewing 20 cereal adverts per week would consume nearly 30 per cent more of these cereals.
Health campaigners said the research proved beyond doubt that adverts for sugary breakfast cereals – banned only during children’s TV programmes – were helping to fuel Britain’s child obesity crisis.
Some cereals are more than a third sugar, meaning one bowl can contain about three teaspoons’ worth. Among the worst offenders are Kellogg’s Frosties at 37 per cent sugar and Coco Pops at 35 per cent.The average child under ten now consumes 14 teaspoons’ worth of sugar daily, according to public health experts – more than twice the recommended adult intake.
The study, by researchers at Dartmouth University in the US, will fuel criticism of the UK Government’s decision not to extend the ‘sugar tax’ on fizzy drinks to other products. Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said last night: ‘We need a sugar tax on cereals and a blanket ban on advertising these products to children.’
SUGAR is the worst thing in our diets, an unseen source of obesity often hidden in innocent-looking foodstuffs and drinks.
Few of us would shovel 14 teaspoons of sugar into the mouths of our children.
Yet the average child under ten is consuming exactly that, daily, much of it in breakfast cereals so crammed with sweetness – nearly three teaspoons in an ounce – that they may be one of the main causes of increasing childhood obesity.
Advertising, we now learn, significantly boosts children’s consumption of these unhealthy things.
Tackling this with a sugar tax seems nannyish and overbearing, but if manufacturers will not restrain themselves, government will eventually have to act.