literature reviews

How Television Fast Food Marketing Aimed at Children Compares with Adult Advertisements Amy M. Bernhardt1, Cara Wilking3, Anna M. Adachi-Mejia1,2, Elaina Bergamini1, Jill Marijnissen4,

James D. Sargent1,2*

1 Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States of America, 2 Department of Pediatrics, Geisel School of

Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States of America, 3 Public Health Advocacy Institute, Northeastern University School of Law, Boston,

Massachusetts, United States of America, 4 Developmental Psychopathology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Abstract

Objectives: Quick service restaurant (QSR) television advertisements for children’s meals were compared with adult advertisements from the same companies to assess whether self-regulatory pledges for food advertisements to children had been implemented.

Methods: All nationally televised advertisements for the top 25 US QSR restaurants from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 were obtained and viewed to identify those advertising meals for children and these advertisements were compared with adult advertisements from the same companies. Content coding included visual and audio assessment of branding, toy premiums, movie tie-ins, and depictions of food. For image size comparisons, the diagonal length of the advertisement was compared with the diagonal length of salient food and drink images.

Results: Almost all of the 92 QSR children’s meal advertisements that aired during the study period were attributable to McDonald’s (70%) or Burger King (29%); 79% of 25,000 television placements aired on just four channels (Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Nicktoons). Visual branding was more common in children’s advertisements vs. adult advertisements, with food packaging present in 88% vs. 23%, and street view of the QSR restaurant present in 41% vs. 12%. Toy premiums or giveaways were present in 69% vs. 1%, and movie tie-ins present in 55% vs. 14% of children’s vs. adult advertisements. Median food image diagonal length was 20% of the advertisement diagonal for children’s and 45% for adult advertisements. The audio script for children’s advertisements emphasized giveaways and movie tie-ins whereas adult advertisements emphasized food taste, price and portion size.

Conclusions: Children’s QSR advertisements emphasized toy giveaways and movie tie-ins rather than food products. Self- regulatory pledges to focus on actual food products instead of toy premiums were not supported by this analysis.

Citation: Bernhardt AM, Wilking C, Adachi-Mejia AM, Bergamini E, Marijnissen J, et al. (2013) How Television Fast Food Marketing Aimed at Children Compares with Adult Advertisements. PLoS ONE 8(8): e72479. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072479

Editor: Amanda Bruce, University of Missouri-Kansas City, United States of America

Received January 28, 2013; Accepted July 10, 2013; Published August 28, 2013

Copyright: � 2013 Bernhardt et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This work was supported by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Award 69552 (www.rwjf.org) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) 3R01CA077026- 12S1 (NIH.gov). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

* E-mail: [email protected]

Introduction

Global food companies have an influential impact on public

health, [1] and the enormous resources they direct toward

marketing and branding of unhealthy foods [2] has generated

scrutiny of how food is marketed to children. [3] Fast food

consumed by children away from home in quick service

restaurants (QSRs) is of particular concern, as it is linked to

increased calorie intake [4] and decreased diet quality. [5] Further,

increases in the proportion of calories consumed away from home

corresponds with the onset of widespread obesity in the

population. [5] Finally, higher consumption of fast food has been

linked with larger increases in body mass index over time [6].

Fast food intake in children may be influenced by fast food

marketing. [7] Televised food commercials played on children’s

television channels often advertise nonessential foods and

frequently contain premiums and promotional characters. [8] In

2006, U.S. QSR chains reported to the Federal Trade Commis-

sion (FTC) that they spent $161 million marketing to 2–11 year

olds (56% on television advertising). Of the money QSR chains

spent, $74.4 million (46%) went to cross-promotions to tie their

meals to movies, television shows, and animated characters. [9] An

additional estimated $360 million was spent on the toy premiums

themselves. [10] Exposure to food advertisements has been shown

to alter eating choices and behaviors, [11] and associating food

with animated characters enhances a child’s perceived food taste

and preference. [9,12] Obese children may be highly susceptible to

food advertising. [13,14] Fast food advertising exposure is

associated with higher fast food consumption in children, [15]

and fast food branding has been shown to influence taste

preferences [16].

In the United States, food composition, ingredient labeling and

health claims are subject to federal regulation by the Food and

PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 August 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 8 | e72479

Drug Administration (FDA). General advertising or marketing of

food is primarily regulated by the Federal Trade Commission

(FTC). [17] (For a description of the regulatory role on food

advertising for each agency, see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/

policystmt/ad-food.shtm). At the state level, state attorneys general

have broad powers to regulate the food industry. Food marketing

must not be false, deceptive or unfair under applicable federal and

state laws.

A self-regulatory system also exists, run by the Better Business

Bureau (BBB) and funded by private industry. Since 1974 the BBB

has operated the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU),

which maintains a set of marketing guidelines focused on tactics

used to market foods and other products to children. For example,

CARU’s Guidelines state that: ‘‘[a]dvertisers should recognize that

their use of [toy] premiums... has the potential to enhance the

appeal of their products to children’’ and that ‘‘since children have

difficulty distinguishing product from premium, advertising that

contains a premium message should focus the child’s attention

primarily on the product and make the premium message clearly

secondary.’’ [18] Since 2006, the BBB also has run the Children’s

Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative whereby companies

pledge that food advertising to children will feature only foods and

meal combinations that meet certain nutrition criteria. [19] The

combination of CARU’s toy premium guideline and CFBAI’s

emphasis on the nutritional value of the foods advertised to

children suggest that food should be the focus of children’s QSR

advertising.

In a 2006 study conducted prior to the CFBAI, Connor [20]

assessed food marketing on four hour blocks of children’s

programming and found fast food advertisements aimed at young

children (from McDonald’s, Chuck E Cheese’s, and Wendy’s)

promoted branding. Branding seeks to create positive associations

with a company or product and is achieved through images of

children engaged in fun or exciting activities, mascot imagery and

licensed characters as opposed to the actual characteristics of the

product itself, in this case food. We examined all television

advertisements from the 25 top US QSR restaurant chains that

aired on national television. We wished to determine the

proportion of QSR companies that ran any television advertise-

ments aimed at children during the study period, to determine if

this practice was common for QSR companies. Secondly, for

companies that ran advertisements aimed at children, we

contrasted QSR television marketing approaches to children

versus adults, conducting a content analysis of the children’s

advertisements and a matched set of adult advertisements from the

same companies. We aimed to determine if companies were

adhering to the CARU guidelines that mandated a focus on food,

rather than premiums and tie-ins, in children’s QSR advertising. A

continued focus in children’s advertisements on nonfood items,

particularly if advertisements aimed at adults emphasized food,

would imply that the self-regulatory guidelines are ineffective.

Methods

We obtained the television advertisements for the top 25 quick

service restaurants for 2008 named in Quick Service Magazine

and based on 2008 system-wide sales in the United States.

Advertisements were purchased from an ad agency which

monitors all cable and network television. We identified any

QSR television ad placement that aired during a 1 year period

(July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010) on national television (N = 1135).

All advertisements were reviewed to determine if the product

being marketed was a ‘‘children’s meal’’ specifically packaged for

children (e.g., the McDonald’s Happy Meal). Unique advertise-

ments were identified by content and length. Some of the 30-

second children’s advertisements contained two distinctly themed

15-second segments back-to-back. Despite the incongruent con-

tent, these advertisements were treated as one unique 30-second

ad because that is how they were aired.

Each children’s advertisement was matched for length with an

ad aimed at adolescents/adults that was randomly selected from

the adult ad pool from that company. All of the advertisements

were evaluated by 2 coders and all discrepancies on all ad content

were resolved by a third person. We coded the advertisements

through visual assessment and audio track transcripts. We viewed

every 16th frame, with each frame visually assessed for the

presence of variables indicative of branding(visual depiction of

logo, mascot, food packaging, street view of the restaurant), the

presence of giveaways (toys) and cross-promotions, and food

products (food, drinks, and healthy food (apples or milk)). For each

frame where food or drink was clearly recognizable, the largest

food image was assessed for size, which was measured along its

longest dimension and compared with the diagonal of the ad

frame. For images that contained multiple food items, the diagonal

of the entire composite image was measured.

A written audio track transcript for each QSR food ad was

created and a total word count established for each ad. Coding

rules were established to associate words from the transcript with

each variable of interest, including those listed above as well as any

reference to the food itself (spicy, freshly baked, 100% pure beef),

portion size (big, third pounder, double) or price (value, dollar, ‘‘a

steal’’). For words with multiple meanings, coders were instructed

to associate them with one variable of interest according to a pre-

determined hierarchy.

Statistical Analysis We first compared the proportion of advertisements having any

visual depiction of a variable of interest using the chi square test.

Among advertisements containing one or more frames for the

variable of interest, a two-tailed t-test of means was performed to

assess whether adult advertisements had, on average, a higher or

lower percentage of frames with the variable depicted, compared

with the children’s advertisements. Food and drink size was

assessed as a percent of the screen (i.e., the advertisement)

diagonal. For frames with food and drink, percent of the screen

diagonal was regressed as a function of adult vs. children’s ad while

controlling for vendor and accounting for clustering of the data at

the ad-level. Word counts for the advertisement audiotrack were

also assessed. Adult advertisements had significantly more words in

the audio script compared with children’s advertisements (mean

58 vs. 39, respectively), so words associated with a variable were

assessed as a percentage of the total word count. All percentages

were compared using the t-test, with a p-value of ,0.05

considered statistically significant.

Results

Which Quick Service Restaurant Chains Market to Children on Television?

The top 25 QSR restaurants covered in the study are listed in

Table 1, along with 2009 revenues, whether any advertising

involving childrens’ meals was identified from our sample of 1135

national television advertisements, and the number of unique

children’s advertisements that aired during the study period. Only

3 QSR companies were found to advertise to children; those

products were Burger King Kids Meals, McDonald’s Happy

Meals, and Subway Fresh Fit for Kids. During the study

observation period, there were 62 unique McDonald’s Happy

Fast Food Television Advertising to Children

PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 2 August 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 8 | e72479

Meal and 30 Burger King Kid’s Meal advertisements, and only 3

from Subway. The sample from Subway was too small to include

in any subgroup analyses by company, and these advertisements

were dropped from the dataset. This left 92 children’s advertise-

ments from McDonald’s and Burger King and 92 matched adult

McDonald’s and Burger King advertisements for the analysis.

Data were available for where and when the advertisements were

placed on national television for 180 of the 184 advertisements.

Over the one-year period, 44,062 McDonalds and 37,210

Burger King advertisement placements were identified on national

television channels. McDonald’s placed a stronger emphasis on the

child market, with 40% of its placements aimed at young children

compared with 21% for Burger King. Thus, during the study

period, over two-thirds of all placements for children’s fast food

advertisements were attributable to the McDonald’s QSR chain.

Table 2 shows the 4 top stations for placement of the children’s

advertisements, along with placements for the matched adult

advertisements on those same channels. Seventy-nine percent of

placements for children’s advertisements occurred on just four

children’s television stations–Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon,

Disney XD, and Nicktoons–with one-third of placements occur-

ring on Cartoon Network. The adult advertisments were rarely

placed on these stations, lending validation to their categorization

into childrens’ and adult categories.

How do Children’s Fast Food Advertisements Differ Visually from Adult Advertisements?

The 184 McDonald’s and Burger King advertisements

contained 8,831 individual frames, about equally split between

children’s and adult categories. Statistically significant compari-

sons are discussed below (all visual comparisons are shown in

Table 3).

Branding. Logo depictions were present in all advertise-

ments. The percentage of frames with logos was significantly

higher in children’s (33%) compared with adult advertisements

(23%). Mascots were not more common in children’s advertise-

ments, but this obscures a difference by company. McDonald’s

featured Ronald McDonald only in children’s advertisements

(23% of the time) whereas Burger King’s ‘‘The King’’ appeared

only in adult advertisements (40% of the time). Food packaging

was present in 88% of children’s advertisements vs. 23% of adult

advertisements. Among advertisements depicting any food pack-

aging, the package was shown more frequently in children’s

advertisements (23% vs. 11% of frames in adult advertisements). A

street view of the restaurant was present more often in children’s

advertisements (41%) than adult advertisments (12%).

Premiums and cross-promotions. Toy premiums were

present in 69% of children’s advertisements vs. 1% of adult

advertisments with 34% of frames in those advertisements

containing a visual reference to toy premiums. References to

Table 1. National televsion adertising aimed at children, top 25 QSR restaurants in 2009, United States.

Top 25 Fast Food Restaurant Chains

2009 U.S. Revenues (millions of dollars)

Children’s Meal Television Marketing on National Television, 2009–10

Number of Unique Children’s Meal Ads*

McDonald’s 31 YES 62

Subway 10 YES 3

Burger King 9 YES 30

Starbuck’s Coffee 8.4 NO 0

Wendy’s 8.3 NO 0

Taco Bell 6.8 NO 0

Dunkin’ Donuts 5.7 NO 0

Pizza Hut 5 NO 0

KFC 4.9 NO 0

Sonic 3.8 NO 0

Arby’s 3.2 NO 0

Jack in The Box 3 NO 0

Domino’s 3 NO 0

Chick - fil-A 3.2 NO 0

Panera Bread 2.8 NO 0

Dairy Queen 2.6 NO 0

Papa John’s 2.1 NO 0

Hardee’s 1.7 NO 0

Quiznos Subs 1.8 NO 0

Popeyes 1.6 NO 0

Carl’s Jr. 1.4 NO 0

Chipotle 1.5 NO 0

Panda Express 1.3 NO 0

Wataburger 1.2 NO 0

Church’s Chicken 1 NO 0

*That aired nationally between July 1, 2009 and June 32, 2010. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072479.t001

Fast Food Television Advertising to Children

PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 3 August 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 8 | e72479

movies or other cross-promotions were present in 55% of

children’s vs. 14% of adult advertisements. None of the movies

in children’s advertisements were rated as appropriate for general

audiences (Rated G); the PG-13 category comprised 22% of

movies cross-promoted to children by McDonald’s and 50% by

Burger King (the rest were PG).

Food. Food was present in almost all advertisements but

drinks were present in a higher proportion of children’s

advertisements. A higher proportion of adult ad frames (34%)

showed food vs. children’s meal ad frames (26%). Healthy foods,

milk and/or apple slices, were present in 78% of children’s

advertisements and none of the adult advertisements and

accounted for 18% of frames in the children’s meal advertise-

ments. Figure 1 illustrates the significantly smaller size of food

images in children’s vs. adult ads with box plots showing the

median and interquartile range for food diagonal as a percentage

of the screen diagonal in both types of ads. Median food image size

was only 20 percent of the screen diagonal in children’s ads

compared with 45 percent in adult ads. Drink images also

represented a significantly smaller percentage of the screen

diagonal for children’s compared to adult advertisements, but

the differences were not as large as for food (median 15% vs. 20%

respectively).

How does the Audio Track of Children’s Advertisements Differ from Adult Advertisements?

Statistically significant comparisons for categorical word counts

as a percentage of the total word count are illustrated in Figure 2,

which shows box plots for the distribution for children’s vs. adult

advertisements. Restaurant name occupied a median of 4.9% of

the audio track for children’s advertisements and 2.8% for adult

advertisements. Movie tie-ins or toys occupied a median of 12%

vs. 1.5% of the audio script for children’s compared with adult

advertisements. Food taste descriptors were much more common

in adult compared with children’s audio tracks, occupying a

median of 13.6% vs. 1.3%; the distribution for food descriptors in

adult advertisements looked much the same as the distribution for

descriptors for toy premiums or movie tie-ins in the children’s

meal advertisements. Additionally, food portion size and price

were both more common in adult compared to the children’s

audio tracks–a median of 22.5% vs. 0.17% respectively for food

portion size and 1.7% vs. 0.0% for food price (this comparison not

illustrated in Figure 2).

Discussion

This contemporary examination of QSR television advertising

for the top 25 restaurants found that almost all children’s

advertisements airing nationally in the U.S. were attributable to

just two companies–McDonald’s and Burger King. These

Table 2. Top four stations for placement for children’s ads, with placement for adult ads on the same channels.

Number of Placements

Station Children’s Ads (percent of all children’s ad placements) Adult Ads

Cartoon Network 8267 (32.3) 0

Nickelodeon 4671 (18.3) 9

Disney XD 4135 (16.2) 0

Nicktoons 3176 (12.4) 0

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072479.t002

Table 3. Visual comparisons between children’s and adult ads.

Ad characteristic Percent of ads Showing Percent of frames (mean) among ads showing

Children’s Adult P Children’s Adult P

Branding

Logo 100 100 NS 33 23 ,0.001

Mascot 15 13 NS 20 19 NS

Food packaging 88 23 ,0.001 23 11 0.001

Restaurant street view 41 12 ,0.001 24 19 NS

Giveaway or cross-promotion

Toy giveaway 69 1 ,0.001 34

Movie 55 14 ,0.001 61 44 0.05

Food emphasis

Food present 96 84 0.008 26 34 0.02

Healthy food (milk or apples) 78 0 ,0.001 18

Drink present 89 60 ,0.001 22 21 NS

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072479.t003

Fast Food Television Advertising to Children

PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 4 August 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 8 | e72479

companies marketed children’s meals predominantly on four

channels, including Nickelodeon which has been previously shown

to primarily advertise foods of poor nutritional value. [21]

Whereas adult television advertisements from these QSR compa-

nies emphasized the taste, portion size and price of food products,

children’s advertisements emphasized toy premiums and movie

tie-ins, brands and logos. Children’s advertisements also empha-

sized the street view of the restaurant, which may help children to

recognize it as they drive by with their parents. The clear emphasis

in child QSR advertisements on toy premiums and movie tie-ins

suggests that during the study period, CARU and CFBAI self-

regulatory pledges were associated with little advertising emphasis

on actual food products sold to children. Moreover, the children’s

advertisements emphasized techniques that the companies’ self-

regulatory body has identified as potentially misleading. Our

findings are consistent with the experience of Australia, where food

companies have failed to live up to self-regulatory standards there

[22].

Given health concerns about obesity and its relation to fast food

consumption, enhanced oversight of QSR marketing to children at

the local, state and federal level is needed to align QSR advertising

to children with health promotion efforts and existing principles of

honest and fair marketing to children. Forcing accountability

through periodic evaluation of food industry advertising, [23] as

we have tried to exemplify here, is one basis for successful self-

regulation. We suggest that annual evaluations are needed. In

Figure 1. Distribution for the size of salient food images in television advertisements for Burger King and McDonald’s, by whether the advertisement was aimed at children or adults. Size is measured by the longest diagonal across the largest food image and is reported as the percentage of the screen diagonal. The top and bottom of each box represents interquartile range and the line in the middle of the box represents the median. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072479.g001

Figure 2. Percentage of all words in the audiotrack in advertisements for Burger King and McDonald’s that refer to restaurant name, premium or movie tie-in, food descriptors, or food portion size, by whether the advertisements were aimed at children or adults. The top and bottom of each box represents interquartile range and the line in the middle of the box represents the median. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072479.g002

Fast Food Television Advertising to Children

PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 5 August 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 8 | e72479

order to be effective, however, the monitoring needs to be

conducted by an agency like the FTC. If the same problems

continue to be found in more contemporary advertisements

despite continued self-regulation, further governmental action

aimed at children’s food advertising may be warranted.

Our finding of the lack of substantial emphasis on food in the

self-regulatory environment is limited by the sample frame, which

ended in June 2010, and we cannot comment on the content of

children’s advertisements since then. Also, our content analysis

involves adults observations about advertisements aimed at

children. Future research should be done to test whether children

tend to focus on premiums and tie-ins in QSR television

advertising. Our decision to focus only on ad content is not able

to address whether certain ads were targeted to low SES or

minority groups, those for whom obesity is most prevalent. Future

studies should address whether food ad targeting enhances such

health disparities. Finally, our study does not assess whether seeing

children’s advertisements prompts requests for toys or visits to fast

food restaurants, or whether such exposure is related to obesity.

These areas seem fertile ground for further research.

In summary, this study examined children’s QSR food

advertisements that aired nationally between 2009 and 2010, a

period when both McDonalds and Burger King aired 99% of

QSR advertisements aimed at children, promised to emphasize

healthy food, and to de-emphasize toy premiums and movie tie-

ins. Although some of the foods presented in children’s meals

could be characterized as ‘‘healthy,’’ little emphasis was placed on

actually showing the food compared with adult advertisements

from the same companies, and toy premiums and tie-ins were

presented prominently in both the visual and audio elements of

these advertisements. We conclude that these companies did not

follow through with their self-regulatory promises during the study

period.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: AMB EB AAM. Performed the

experiments: EB AMB JM. Analyzed the data: JDS. Wrote the paper: JDS

AMB CW AAM.

References

1. The PLoS Medicine Editors (2012) PLoS Medicine series on Big Food: the food

industry is ripe for scrutiny. PLoS Med 9(6): e1001246.

2. Andersen LG, Baker JL, Sorensen TI (2012) Contributions of incidence and persistence to the prevalence of childhood obesity during the emerging epidemic

in Denmark. PLoS One 7: e42521. 3. Nestle M (2010) Strategies to prevent childhood obesity must extend beyond

school environments. Am J Prev Med 39: 280–281. 4. Bowman SA, Gortmaker SL, Ebbeling CB, Pereira MA, Ludwig DS (2004)

Effects of fast-food consumption on energy intake and diet quality among

children in a national household survey. Pediatrics 113: 112–118. 5. Mancino TJ, Guthrie J, Lin B-H (2010) How food away from home affects

children’s diet quality. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. (No. ERR-104). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Economic Research Service.

6. Duffey KJ, Gordon-Larsen P, Jacobs DR, Williams OD, Popkin BM (2007) Differential associations of fast food and restaurant food consumption with 3-y

change in body mass index: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study. Am J Clin Nutr 85: 201–208.

7. Hastings G, McDermott L, Angus K, Stead M, Thomson S (2006) The extent, nature and effects of food promotion to children: A review of the evidence:

technical paper prepared for the World Health Organization. World Health

Org anization. Available: http://www. who .int/dietphysicalactivity/ publications/Hastings_paper_marketing.pdf. Accessed April 17, 2013.

8. Kelly B, Halford JC, Boyland EJ, Chapman K, Bautista-Castaño I, et al. (2010) Television food advertising to children: a global perspective. Am J Public Health

100: 1730–6.

9. Cairns G, Angus K, Hastings G, Caraher M (2012) Systematic reviews of the evidence on the nature, extent and effects of food marketing to children. A

retrospective summary. Appetite 62: 209–215. 10. Federal Trade Commission (2008) Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents:

A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation (2008).

Washington, DC: U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Available: http://www.ftc. gov/os/2008/07/P064504foodmktingreport.pdf. Accessed April 17, 2013.

11. Boyland EJ, Harrold JA, Kirkham TC, Corker C, Cuddy J, et al. (2011) Food commercials increase preference for energy-dense foods, particularly in children

who watch more television. Pediatrics 128: e93–100.

12. Boyland EJ, Halford JC (2012) Television advertising and branding: Effects on

eating behaviour and food preferences in children. Appetite. (epub ahead of

print) PMID: 22421053.

13. Bruce AS, Lepping RJ, Bruce JM, Cherry JB, Martin LE, et al. (2013) Brain

responses to food logos in obese and healthy weight children. J Pediatr 162: 759–

764 e752.

14. Halford JC, Boyland EJ, Hughes GM, Stacey L, McKean S, et al. (2008)

Beyond-brand effect of television food advertisements on food choice in children:

the effects of weight status. Public Health Nutr 11: 897–904.

15. Andreyeva T, Kelly IR, Harris JL (2011) Exposure to food advertising on

television: associations with children’s fast food and soft drink consumption and

obesity. Econ Hum Biol 9: 221–233.

16. Robinson TN, Borzekowski DL, Matheson DM, Kraemer HC (2007) Effects of

fast food branding on young children’s taste preferences. Arch Pediatr Adolesc

Med 161: 792–797.

17. Federal Trade Commission (1994) Enforcement Policy Statement on Food

Advertising. Available: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/policystmt/ad-food.shtm. Ac-

cessed April 5, 2013.

18. Children’s Advertising Review Unit (2009) Self-Regulatory Program for

Children’s Advertising. Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. Available:

www.caru.org/guidelines/guidelines.pdf. Accessed April 6, 2013.

19. Council of Better Business Bureaus (2013) Children’s Food and Beverage

Advertising Initiative. Better Business Bureau. Available: http://www.bbb.org/

us/childrens-food-and-beverage-advertising-initiative/. Accesssed April 17,

2013.

20. Connor SM (2006) Food-related advertising on preschool television: building

brand recognition in young viewers. Pediatrics 118: 1478–1485.

21. Batada A, Wootan MG (2007) Nickelodeon markets nutrition-poor foods to

children. Am J Prev Med 33: 48–50.

22. Roberts M, Pettigrew S, Chapman K, Miller C, Quester P (2012) Compliance

with children’s television food advertising regulations in Australia. BMC Public

Health 12: 846.

23. Sharma LL, Teret SP, Brownell KD (2010) The food industry and self-

regulation: standards to promote success and to avoid public health failures.

Am J Public Health 100: 240–246.

Fast Food Television Advertising to Children

PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 6 August 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 8 | e72479

Copyright of PLoS ONE is the property of Public Library of Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.