A new study shows that when children see more TV ads, including fast food commercials for McDonald's and Burger King, they ask their parents to visit the restaurants, and their parents grant their wish. Researchers focused on ad-supported TV channels including Nickelodeon and Disney, whose burger-and-fries advertisers lure youngsters with kids meals and "premiums" such as Happy Meal toys.
The Geisel School of Medicine research team is based at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire. Its findings were published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Researchers examined a sample size of 100 children between the ages of 3 to 7. They lived in a rural area with little access to fast food.
The study revealed that the more often children watched commercial TV that included child-targeted fast food advertising, the more often their families ate at those restaurants. However, there was no link between a child's viewing of ad-free PBS TV viewing and the family's number of visits to the restaurants.
Researchers only included cable TV networks whose viewing audience is mostly pre-schoolers and young children: Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Nicktoons. Nearly 80 percent of McDonald's and Burger King ads are broadcast on the four networks, according to Tech Times.
Among the study's participants, 54 percent of the children asked their parents to visit the fast food restaurants. In addition, 29 percent received free toys from kids meals. Among kids who got toys, 83 percent had requested their parents to take them to Burger King or McDonald's.
A 2013 study showed that child-directed advertising focused on the kids meal toys and movie tie-ins instead of the actual fast food. The same research group conducted another study. They learned that when children watched fast food TV ads from 2009-2010, two-thirds of the time they could not remember the food advertised, according to The New York Times.
In a third past study, 81 percent of the nearly 100 youngsters remembered French fries in a Burger King TV ad. However, a picture of apple slices was shown.
Jennifer Edmond is a researcher at the Geisel School of Medicine. She recommended that parents switch their kids to commercial-free TV networks, to avoid fast food advertising.