Analysis of food advertising aimed at children and adolescents in Chilean open channel television

Introduction: Childhood obesity represents a major public health problem in Chile. Studies show that television advertising affects directly the consumption of energy-dense foods in children and adolescents. Objective: To study the nutritional characteristics of foods advertised on five Chilean television channels aimed at children in order to identify the percentage of healthy and unhealthy foods, to know their exposure to lower quality nutritional foods and to incorporate new perspectives on food and nutritional education. Method: 350 hours were recorded during the day (09:00 to 20:00 hours) in 5 Chilean television channels (July and August 2009). Of all the advertising were selected general and child food advertisements. They were analyzed by their nutritional contents: fat, saturated fat, salt and simple sugars added, considering the methodology called "light food" proposed by the National Food Agency of the United Kingdom (FSAB) and contained in a Chilean bill designed to identify healthy foods. Results: 56.6% of food advertising was targeted at children. Only 12.8% were healthy foods, 8.5 and 78.7% were respectively moderately and unhealthy. Conclusions: There is a predominance of advertising aimed at children associated with unhealthy foods, suggesting the need to regulate and to encourage food companies to develop products with enhanced nutritional quality. (C) 2010 SENC. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.