SoylentNews

lhsi writes:

A research team that included Michigan State University staff reports that:

The more a child is familiar with logos and other images from fast-food restaurants, sodas and not-so-healthy snack food brands, the more likely the child is to be overweight or obese.

And, unfortunately, studies have shown that people who are overweight at a young age, tend to stay that way.

The children ages 3 to 5 were tested by being given pictures of unhealthy food-related logos. They then were given pictures of food items, packaging and cartoon characters and asked to match the items with their corresponding brand logos.

Doing the study twice, the research team found that among one group exercise tended to offset the negative effects of too much familiarity with unhealthy food. However, that finding could not be duplicated in the second group.

"The inconsistency across studies tells us that physical activity should not be seen as a cure-all in fixing childhood obesity," McAlister said. "Of course we want kids to be active, but the results from these studies suggest that physical activity is not the only answer. The consistent relationship between brand knowledge and BMI suggests that limiting advertising exposure might be a step in the right direction too."

Because kids get most of their food messages from television, the question is what causes more harm the sedentary lifestyle brought on by too much time in front of the TV or the unhealthy food messages kids are bombarded with?