Our Project on Food Advertising and Obesity

Our project is going to focus on the role of food advertising on childhood obesity. As a whole, childhood obesity rates in America have been skyrocketing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics have reported that from 1963-1970, the proportion of overweight children aged 6 to 11 years old in the United States was 4.2%. In 1999-2000, the proportion increased to 15.3%! This is a huge increase in not that many years. One of my goals is to show others the role that food advertising may have on this increase. Over the years, the media has grown, and food advertising has become a million dollar industry! Companies will spend millions of dollar advertising from television, to billboards, to the internet, to the radio, to any other kind of media they can get their hands on. In the last few years, Americans have become increasingly dependent on the internet and so I would also like to look at studies that are very recent that may cover the past few years to see if there is an even greater difference than there has been in the past. I would also like to report on ways that we can lower these childhood obesity rates rather than support their increase.  However, this might be off topic, so if it is please let me know. Obviously food advertising is not the only factor that I believe is leading to childhood obesity, so I would like to mention other possible factors, but I do believe that it is a very important one.



Communication Studies at The University of Michigan