Racial/ethnic and income disparities in child and adolescent exposure to food and beverage television ads across the U.S. media markets☆
Section snippets
Background
In 2009–2010, nearly 17% of U.S. children ages 2–19 were classified as obese (Ogden et al., 2012). The data indicated that obesity prevalence was 24.3% among non-Hispanic black children and 21.2% among Hispanic children, compared to 14% among non-Hispanic white children (Ogden et al., 2012). Evidence also shows obesity prevalence is greater among children and adolescents living in lower-income households (Ogden et al., 2010). Marketing of foods and beverages that are unhealthy (i.e. high in
Advertising measures
Local spot food and beverage television ratings data reflecting the numbers of ads seen were licensed from Nielsen Media Research (NMR) for English language stations. Ratings were obtained for each year from 2003–2007 for the largest 129 DMAs in the United States. Nielsen׳s DMA® regions are geographic areas used when measuring local television viewing. DMAs vary in size, generally covering several counties, with some describing commonly recognized metropolitan areas. Nielsen tracks commercials
Results
Table 1 shows that black and Hispanic children and adolescents together comprised slightly more than one-third of the populations in these age groups; median household income was approximately $50,000 in the media markets studied. Children and adolescents in these media markets saw, on average, 21.1 and 32.9 food and beverage television local spot advertisements per week that aired in the DMAs in 2003–2007. These local spot ads represented 22.7% and 33.6% of total (local spot plus national)
Discussion
We assessed patterns of child and adolescent exposure to local TV spot ads for seven food-related categories (cereal, beverages, sweets, snacks, other foods, and fast food and full service restaurants) and four sub-categories of beverage types according to DMA race/ethnicity (percent black or Hispanic or other race vs. white) and median household income by linking NMR media market data with Census data. Thus, we were able to examine exposure to potentially targeted ads by local geographic area
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This study was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) through grants to the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network and to the Bridging the Gap program at the University of Illinois at Chicago and by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) award number R01CA138456. The manuscript׳s contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of the RWJF, the NCI or the National Institutes of Health. The authors thank Dr. Sonya A. Grier for her helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. The authors have no conflicts of interests for this manuscript.