A few weeks ago, the Institute of Medicine released a new report which has been reported to conclude that the rise in children's obesity in the United States can be attributed at least in part to advertising of junk food and fast food. According to the Washington Post:
Food and beverage companies are using television ads to entice children into eating massive amounts of unhealthful food, leading to a sharp increase in childhood obesity and diabetes, a national science advisory panel said yesterday.
The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, called on food and beverage manufacturers and restaurants to make more healthful products and shift their advertising emphasis to promote them. If the companies do not do so within two years, Congress should mandate changes, especially for broadcast and cable television ads, the institute said.
"There is strong evidence that exposure to television advertising is associated with" obesity, the government-chartered institute said in a congressionally requested report to determine the effects of food advertising on children's health. The report said most of the food and beverage products promoted to children are high in calories, sugar, salt and fat and low in nutrients.
I haven't read the full report yet, so I won't comment on it extensively here. Richard Posner and Gary Becker have an exchange on their blog, which is reproduced here. I assume that they are commenting on the general issue, not the voluminous IOM Report, which they do not seem to address directly.
As readers will be aware, I published a co-authored article on the topic last year that concluded that based on the data available at that time, the evidence fails to support the conclusion that advertising is contributing to the rise in children's obesity. The article is available here. The article also contains an exhaustive summary of the literature available on the possible causes of rising rates of childhood obesity.
Updated research from the FTC that reinforces the conclusions of our initial study was presented this summer by Pauline Ippolito fo the FTC and is available here.
Becker refers to a PhD dissertation by a newly-minted Chicago grad, which is available here. He concludes that the evidence fails to support the conclusion that the increase in children's obesity can be blamed on changes in diet (i.e., greater consumption of junk food or fast food), but rather a decrease in physical activity resulting from increased computer and video game use.
I hope to have time to read the IOM study over my break, but if not, I thought it would be useful for those following the issue to be aware of the developments related to the IOM report.
It is this kind of research and legal analysis, combined with carefully defined terms that made America great.
Also, I happen to think that Cynicus' comments aren't all that far from the truth.
Some children will always be thin. As a teenager who drank malted weight gain drinks without effect, I can attest to that. However I must concur with the observation (following my daughter's Christmas play last week) that those who might have been chubby 30 years ago now outweigh thin adults by the fourth grade. I will also second the observation that this strikes particularly hard on minority children. While I saw obese white children as well, a clear majority of Black and Hispanic children present were obese.
You make a good point that is often overlooked. It turns out that the children's obesity problem is largely a problem that the extreme tail is getting thicker, rather than an increase in the median. In my presentation I gave at Cato I have two slides, available here and here, that show the thickening at the tail. The median weight for kids has only risen about 4.5% over the past two decades and the median weight at the 95th percentile has risen almost 20%.
I think that the issue is a much different one, and the possible solutions much different, if we analyze it as a problem that primarily negatively affects a relatively small subset of the relevant population a lot. Regulating the advertising of certain foods to all kids, for instance, seems like a questionable response if the problem is a specific subset of the population.
To my mind, the key slide in the presentation is this one.
However, I don't see the reason for then highlighting the possible connection between another type of product — electronic entertainment — and a health problem. That would undermine the idea that consumers are rational, since they seem to be choosing products and activities that are harmful, at least partly in response to advertising. Why mention this?
All of these factors favor solitary indoor pursuits over outdoors games.
"You can mock my simple statement all you want, but unless I missed a recent lowering of the driving age to 5, it is parents who take their children to fast food establishments."
Unfortunately, that is not the case anymore. An increasing number of school districts have turned their lunch programs over to...fast food vendors. The lunch lady with the hairnet has given way to Ronald McDonald and the Taco Bell chihuahua. Thus, the school bus driver takes our kids to fast food hell.
There is another factor to consider; who is poor in this country. This is the only country in the world where the poorest citizens are often the fattest. In Washington, DC, where the poorest citizens are Black, there is a distinct lack of food options; DC has 6(!) supermarkets, 3 of which are located in Georgetown, Foggy Bottom and Tenally. However, DC has the highest density of McDonald's restaurants in the nation. There are chinese food and fried chicken "carry-outs" on every other corner. It should come as no surprise that the rate of Type 2 diabetes has mutliplied by a factor of 20 over the past 20 years in the district. These statistics mirror other inner city populations as well.