Television commercials work. They work well enough that it makes
sense for fast food restaurants and junk food manufacturers to
spend lots of money to entice your child to overindulge. When
children watch a cartoon with a single food commercial, they
tend to eat twice as much food as when they watch a cartoon with
a toy commercial according to a study announced April 24, 2007
by the University of Liverpool and presented at the European
Congress on Obesity. All of the kids in the study had free
access to a variety of snacks, ranging from high fat, high sugar
choices to several healthy choices. Some of the kids in the
study were overweight or obese, some were of normal weight. Food
advertising affected all of them. Interestingly, the food
commercials had the biggest effect on obese kids, increasing
their food consumption by 134 percent. But even normal weight
kids increased what they ate by 84 percent after seeing the
commercial. Also of interest, the obese kids consistently
reached for the highest fat snacks.