Excellent Editorial earlier this week in Investor’s Business Daily, “Tossing Our Cookies” ($) nails the obesity issue:
Nutrition: The recent announcement by PBS that Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster will be a spokespuppet for healthy eating ignores the fact that obesity is caused by what children eat and not by what they watch.
No one recalls that the movie “Veggie Tales” caused any youngsters to start raiding the fridge in search of cucumbers and broccoli.
Yet the theory that movies and TV unduly influence what children eat is behind the decision by PBS to send his blue furriness, the Cookie Monster, to a politically correct reeducation camp, returning to advise kids who presumably don’t have parental supervision that cookies aren’t everything and let the chocolate chips fall where they may.
They also cite yours truly:
Furthermore, as George Mason University’s Todd Zywicki notes, the average American child watches less TV that he or she used to because of competing influences such as video games, personal computers and cell phones. We now have cable and remote controls and TiVo. Kids don’t just sit through commercials that much anymore.
Overall, it is a nice roundup of the paucity of evidence on the advertising-children’s obesity link.
Update:
A funny email follow-up from a reader:
It’s off topic, but I can’t _believe_ you didn’t stretch your post to
include a reference to the old Lenny Bruce routine (I’m paraphrasing):They say what you watch on television will result in you doing that
same thing. Which, if true, means your kids are better off watching a
stag film than The Greatest Story Ever Told. Because I don’t mind my
kids eventually doing the one thing, but if Jesus comes back to Earth,
I don’t want them to crucify him again.
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