JADA Study: Food Adverts Lead to Imbalanced Diet

Posted By elissa on Jun 2, 2010 | 2 comments

Who knew?

Ok, I’ll cut the sarcasm. In truth, this new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association provides some useful information. It quantifies the sheer awfulness of so many of the commercial foods advertised on television. According to the researchers:

Using a cross-sectional design, food advertisements were observed during 84 hours of primetime and 12 hours of Saturday-morning televised broadcast during the fall of 2004. One-sample t tests were used to compare the food group servings of observed food items to the recommended daily servings and to compare the nutrient content of observed food items to the Daily Values. Results suggest that a diet consisting of observed food items would provide 2,560% of the recommended daily servings for sugars, 2,080% of the recommended daily servings for fat, 40% of the recommended daily servings for vegetables, 32% of the recommended daily servings for dairy, and 27% of the recommended daily servings for fruits. The same diet would substantially oversupply protein, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium, while substantially undersupplying carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins A, E, and D, pantothenic acid, iron, phosphorous, calcium, magnesium, copper, and potassium. Overall, the food choices endorsed on television fail to meet nutrition guidelines and encourage nutritional imbalance.

This comes as no surprise, since TV ads are expensive… thus, you’re going to see the most profitable products advertised there.  Beyond a few basic commodities advertised by trade groups, most of the products you see on TV are processed up the wazoo. So TV acts as a sort of filter by default.  By its very nature, TV provides a distorted view of food/nutrition and diet.

I think it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that most people don’t live exclusively off of advertised food products.  In that sense, the study isn’t completely realistic.  But it’s also true that most people can’t afford to be consuming very many energy-dense/nutrient-poor foods, if they want to stay healthy and maintain normal weights.  Thus, it doesn’t hurt to get a grasp on just how out-of-whack that “big picture” really is. It’s easy to dismiss concerns over individual items – but when looked at in aggregate, it’s actually pretty chilling.