Junk Food Commercials Trigger Unhealthy Choices Among Kids

New York: Junk food commercials on pizzas and burgers during TV programmes influence food choices among children and their brain activities as well, say researchers, adding that the children’s decisions are driven by tastiness rather than healthfulness.

However, taste was even more important to children after watching food commercials compared with non-food commercials.

For the study, 23 children aged between 8-14 years rated 60 food items on how healthy or tasty they were and the researchers studied the children’s brain activity while watching food and non-food commercials and undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Faster decision times like how quickly the children decided whether they wanted to eat the food item shown were also observed after watching food commercials.

Additionally, the ventromedial prefrontal cortices were significantly more active after watching food commercials.

--IANS