Americans not eating enough fruits and vegetables

The effect that advertising has on our lives changes our lives and not necessarily for the better. Everywhere we go and everything we focus on or pick up to read is plastered with advertisements for food. Well, maybe I should say “pseudo-food” because most advertising is aimed at marketing processed stuff and junk foods.

This is unfortunate when it comes to gaining an understanding nutritional requirements and developing an appetite for what our bodies need, as opposed to what we fill them with. It’s even more unfortunate when we appreciate that kids eat what their parents eat and that many parents are filling themselves and their kids up with hollow calories that lead to obesity and health problems.

Kids: Eat Your Vegetables
The Kaiser Family Foundation released the first comprehensive analysis of the nature and scope of online food advertising to children to help inform policymakers, advocates and industry experts in 2006. The report, It’s Child’s Play: Advergaming and the Online Marketing of Food to Children (pdf) , found that more than eight out of ten (85%) of the top food brands that target children through TV advertising also use branded websites to market to children online.

Childhood and teen obesity have become an out-of-control pandemic, but is especially prevalent in the United States. The fact that the childhood obesity rate is almost five times higher than in the 1970’s has made professionals push for more nutrition education. It seems though that the odds are against them.

In a study where children were offered fruits and vegetables for free, they still didn’t want to take up on the offer. While prizes for eating healthy seemed to work in a project in Pennsylvania, the children soon returned to their old eating habits when the prizes were gone.

Children learn eating habits very young and once they know what they like and what they don’t, it is often times extremely difficult to change those habits. Dr. Robert Trevino even told the Associated Press that an unborn child will be born with taste buds that coincide with what the mother consumed during pregnancy.

According to a study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, eight through twelve year old children viewed an average of about 21 advertisements daily on the television for unhealthy foods. There was only an average of one healthy food advertisement per 50 of other food advertisements.

The study, Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States (pdf) , combines content analysis of TV ads with detailed data about children’s viewing habits to provide an estimate of the number and type of TV ads seen by children of various ages.

Fewer than a third of American adults eat the amount of fruits and vegetables the government recommends, a trend that’s remained steady for more than a decade, health officials say. That’s “well below” the government’s goal of getting 75 percent of Americans to eat two servings of fruits and having half of the population consume three servings of vegetables each day by 2010, said Dr. Larry Cohen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (AP GRAPHIC)

Susan Krause, a clinical dietitian at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, said people are eating more refined sugars or choosing protein instead of fruits and vegetables.

“There’s so much information out there and people get very confused. When they’re looking at protein, they feel that’s the solution when they’re not looking at long-term health benefits,” she said. “There’s so many fabricated foods now and people are looking at convenience.”

Not only are fruits and vegetables lower-calorie, they also have minerals and fiber that help guard against chronic diseases and cancer, the CDC says. Source

References:
2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans

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Vegetarian Diets
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