Like the Marlboro Man and martini-swilling TV characters of a couple of decades ago, some advocates for children’s nutritional health would like to see the king of burgers and his clownish golden-arched competition disappear from television airwaves, too.  A just-released study concludes banning fast-food ads during TV programming targeted to children will reduce the incidence of overweight pre-teen children by as much as 18% and teenagers by 14%.

And even though the study’s authors welcome such a ban, they understand it’s highly unlikely.  Their second choice of action, elimination of advertising tax deductions for corporations that continue to advertise fast foods to children, is fully described in the current issue of ‘The Journal of Law and Economics,’ along with the full details of the study.

Study authors Shin-Yi Chou and Inas Rashad, both economists at Lehigh College and Georgia State University, respectively, report that the more fast-food advertising a child sees on television, the higher the risk of becoming obese.  The study, as one would expect, is drawing controversy.

Michael Grossman, a City University of New York economics professor, says it’s not likely children watching more TV are more likely to become overweight but the problem lies with the extremely high number of such advertisements scheduled during children’s TV shows.

Elaine Kolish speaks on behalf of the Council for Better Business Bureaus (BBB) when she says the data used for the study, from the late 1990s, is outdated and no longer relevant.  In more recent years, Burger King, McDonald’s, and at least a dozen other similar companies have taken the BBB pledge to advertise healthier choices to children under 12.  The pledge is part of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative.  She says the two leading fast-food companies - Burger King and McDonald’s - have already begun including low-fat milk and apple sticks in their advertising to children.

Kelly Brownell, director at the Rudd Center for Food Policy at Yale University, expresses concern for the hard-to-calculate impact of television on obesity in children.  Even with the daunting task of formulating the correct equations for analysis, he considers current food-marketing trends a “blight on the landscape” and says the ads’ negative impact to children’s health has been documented time and time again.

Finland, Norway, and Sweden no longer allow commercial sponsorship of any product during children’s television programming, a ban the research team thinks is unlikely to happen in the United States.  As an alternative means of controlling this type advertising to children, the team suggests dropping the federal advertising tax deduction for all fast-food advertising that targets children, a move they expect would prevent obesity in children by 5% to 7%.