Doctors are clamoring for the rights of America’s youth to keep fit this week with an effort to ban fast food ads on television according to the doctor collective from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one in six children and teenagers are obese, which is up three-fold from a generation ago.

It was reported that in 2009, the fast food industry spent $4.2 billion on ads in various media. And research shows they work. One study found kids watching cartoons downed 45% more snacks when they were exposed to food ads instead of ads for other products.

Last April, four government agencies requested public comments on a set of voluntary principles for marketing food to children, with the Federal Trade Commission calling childhood obesity “the most serious health crisis facing today’s youth.”

Dr. Victor Strasburger from the AAP said:

“Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have to get tough with the food industry. It’s time for the food industry to clean up its act and not advertise junk food to young children. Just by banning ads for fast food, one study says we could decrease obesity and overweight by 17 percent.”

Nearly a third of American youngsters eat fast food on any given day, the AAP says, with the nation spending in excess of $110 billion every year on things like burgers and French fries. Yikes.

Strasburger continues:

“I think parents have always thought that if their kids were in their room watching TV or on the Internet, they were happy and safe. The research says, maybe not. It’s all just a smokescreen anyway. The big fast food corporations are basically interested in making money, not making good nutritional products. With billions of dollars in profits every year should come a sense of public health responsibility. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to.”

Dayna M. Maniccia, of the University at Albany in New York recommends setting a sleep timer for kids to manage television watching habits, besides pushing reading as the good alternative. Maniccia and her colleagues found using an electronic device to ensure the TV turns off at a certain time also appears to be effective.

She said in a recent study:

“Parents should serve as positive role models for their children and limit their own as well as their child(rens’)s television viewing.”

Several companies have already pledged to shift their advertising toward healthier choices for young kids, yet research from last year shows fast food restaurants are stepping up marketing directed at children and toddlers.

Strasburger provides these final recommendations:

“Parents need to listen to the AAP guidelines which say, ‘Limit your child to less than two hours of media time per day, keep the TV set and Internet out of the bedroom and avoid screen time in kids under two. We have to give kids healthy alternatives to being couch potatoes. The question is, how fat do we want people to become? Congress needs to think about that.”

Source: The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

Written by Sy Kraft