Teen weight gain predicted
by response to food commercials
9/15/2014,
10:00:00 AM
Kristen
Amiet
|
|
|
Getty
images
Latest
Stories
- Your morning commute makes you happier than you think: study
- One in five US men have committed domestic violence: study
- Waikato measles outbreak over
- Dairy food 'lowers diabetes risk'
- Experts advise to curb sugar to stop decay
Related
Topics
Commercials
advertising junk food activate the brain's "reward regions" in some
teens and can trigger weight gain and obesity, new research has found.
Scientists
from the Oregon Research Institute (ORI), University of Michigan, Yale Rudd
Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and Duke University used functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 30 adolescents aged
between 14 and 17 years while they watched the television show Mythbusters.
The show's
programming included 20 food commercials and 20 non-food commercials that are
frequently advertised to viewers of that age.
In a
one-year follow-up study, the researchers found that participants who showed
"elevated" or rewards-based responses to the food commercials gained
more weight than those who showed less activation in that region of the brain.
"This
research tells us how food commercials may be negatively impacting teens
between the ages of 14 and 17 at-risk for obesity," said ORI scientist
Sonja Yokum.
"[It]
suggests there are individual differences in neural vulnerability to food
commercials that appear to identify youth at risk for excess weight gain."
The
researchers also noted that it's important to consider the findings in deciding
whether to restrict certain types of food advertising to children and
adolescents and also in developing obesity prevention programs.
"In
combination with established risk factors of weight gain during adolescence
such as sedentary behaviour and parental obesity, elevated reward-response to
commercials may be an important contributor and a potential target for
prevention and intervention programs," they said.
In
Australia, the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) is campaigning for
legislation to ban all television food advertising at times where children
comprise the majority of the viewing audience, along with implementation of an
effective system for monitoring and evaluating how their behaviour around food
would be affected by the ban.
Doctor
Julie Woods, co-convenor of the PHAA's Food and Nutrition Special Interest
Group, said the blanket campaign has been introduced because it's difficult to
find a definition for health that all advertisers agree upon.
"That,
and there are so few commercials for genuine health foods as it is," she
said.
"We
know from previous studies children are receptive to this type of advertising
and it has a profound influence on how they behave around food, so these
findings pinpoint the mechanisms that encourage that behaviour."
The
findings are published in Obesity: A Research Journal.
No comments:
Post a Comment