Kids who are at risk for obesity respond 2.5 times as strongly to food ads compared to kids who are not at risk, according to a new study.
This result is “a very strong finding,” said Diane Gilbert-Diamond, an assistant professor of epidemiology and co-author on the paper, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Researchers at Dartmouth had children watch television while crammed into an MRI machine. The subjects watched Nickelodeon’s Figure It Out spliced with 12 minutes of advertising that had been previously determined by another group of kids to be particularly appealing. Half of that advertising was for fast food, half was for non-food products.
The researchers looked at a marker for the obesity-associated (FTO) gene, one of many genotypes that correlate with obesity risk. Of the 78 participants aged nine to 12, 19 were high risk, 37 were at medium risk, and 22 were low risk. The researchers looked at the difference in how the kids reacted to the food ads versus the non-food ads. They found that kids with medium or high risk had a 2.5 times stronger brain reward response to food ads compared to low-risk kids.
The finding suggests that limiting food ads could combat the childhood obesity epidemic
This study is unique because most similar studies look at still images, Gilbert-Diamond said. “We felt that it was important to use food commercials because it’s just more of a realistic stimuli that a person would encounter,” she said. Food and beverage companies spent $633 million on youth television marketing in 2009, according to a 2012 report from the Federal Trade Commission.
“Food cues” are stimuli that remind us of food. They include seeing food, real or advertised, smelling food, or talking about food. Food cues often prompt people to eat when they’re not hungry, but susceptibility to them varies by individual.
The same group of researchers published a previous paper showing that kids with the FTO genotype also consumed more food after seeing food ads.
The finding makes an argument that limiting food ads could combat the childhood obesity epidemic. “We think the effect is probably present for children and adults, but it may be stronger in children because they lack as good of an ability to be aware of the motivations of advertisers,” Gilbert-Diamond said.
The FTC proposed sweeping guidelines in 2011. The guidelines were voluntary. Still, they were squashed, as previous regulatory efforts have been, by the food industry and Congress.
While this study looked at kids aged nine to 12, other research hints that obesity can possibly be arrested if children can maintain a healthy weight until age five.
The childhood obesity rate was steady at about 17 percent between 2011 and 2014, according to government statistics. That’s 12.7 million children, adolescents, and teenagers.
