The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to know if TV commercials make kids fat.
"Today, children watch two to four hours of television per day and view 40,000 ads per year. And the majority of these commercials are for candy, cereal, soda and fast food," said Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC, at a news conference on Wednesday. The purpose of the event was to announce the creation of a task force to determine if there is a link between TV advertising and obesity.
"The amount of television watched by American kids has been increasing in the past twenty-five years, so have their waistlines. Just this month, the Institute of Medicine found that one-third of American children are either obese or at risk for obesity. This is consistent with the Center for Disease Control's findings a few years ago that, since 1980, the proportion of overweight children ages 6 to eleven has doubled and the number of overweight adolescents has tripled."
The task force, said Mr. Martin, will bring together representatives from the food, television, advertising, and health industries, as well as consumer advocate groups to study the issue.
"When the task force has completed its work," said Mr. Martin, "the FCC will issue the task force report to summarize what we have learned, encourage best practices for industry and continue to educate American parents. We all have a responsibility to promote and protect our children's welfare."
Discussion Questions: Do you believe there is a connection between television commercials, particularly on kids' programming, and obesity? What should the goal of the FCC task force be?
We have to admit to a head-scratching moment here.
As Chairman Martin pointed out at Wednesday's news conference, with the Children's Television Act of 1990, Congress placed limits on the amount of advertising that could be shown during children's television programming, largely because it was believed by lawmakers at that time that kids, especially young ones, were susceptible to television advertising messages.
The rest of Mr. Martin's remarks at the conference leads us to believe that there is no doubt, in his mind at least, of a connection between advertising targeted to kids and obesity. If so, why the taskforce? By his own admission, if the findings support the notion of the connection between advertising and obesity, the task force will "encourage best practices for industry and continue to educate American parents." Is that anything different than what is already being done today?