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IMPACT OF TV ADVERTISEMENTS AND TV VIEWING ON FOOD CHOICES AND FOOD HABITS IN 6-10 YEAR OLD CHILDREN

TV advertisements and TV viewing have been associated with children’s food choices and food preferences and has been a topic of interest for many years. With every passing year, the trends in TV advertising are constantly changing; better strategies are adopted in order to promote a particular product. The increased number of unhealthy food commercials aired on children’s favourite channels could have an impact on their food choices and food habits. This study was done with an aim of finding the influence of TV advertisements and TV viewing on the purchase requests, food choices, and food habits of 6-10 year old children. A cross over study was conducted by dividing the children into control and experimental groups, questionnaires which were distributed were to be filled by both the children and their mothers’ assessing TV viewing, food consumed while TV viewing and attitude towards advertised foods. Interventions were done to check brand preference and retention capacity of advertisements viewed, and to assess the healthfulness of food choices opted while TV viewing on a subpopulation (n=20). Results show that there were no significant values between the control and experimental groups. In the context of brand preference and retention capacity of advertisements; significant values were obtained for mango beverage (p=0.02) and potato chips (p=0.03) commercials. The healthfulness of food choices while TV viewing was poor as most of the children opted for unhealthy snacks and the consumption of healthy snacks like fruits were low.