MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
High-sugar cereal brands target their TV ads at kids under age 12. A new study finds that this advertising leads to greater household purchases of unhealthy cereals. It is the first study to directly link food advertising exposure by children versus adults with subsequent purchases of these foods. NPR's Maria Godoy has more.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: If you've spent any time watching kids TV, this will sound familiar.
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LARRY KENNEY: (As Sonny) Can't control myself. I'm going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
GODOY: From Cocoa Puffs to Frosted Flakes, these breakfast cereal commercials feature colorful cartoon characters that appeal directly to kids.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: The ultimate chocolatey experience, Cocoa Puffs cereal. Part of a good breakfast.
GODOY: Kid cereals are the most heavily advertised food product to children. Jennifer Harris is with the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut. She says the most heavily advertised brands have as many as 12 grams of sugar per serving. That's about a tablespoon.
JENNIFER HARRIS: Cereal companies do have healthy products, but the high sugar ones are the ones that they actually advertise to kids.
GODOY: In a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Harris and her colleagues looked at all cereals purchased by U.S. households over a nine-year period. They also looked at Nielsen's rating data, which closely monitored all the ads that people in a household see.
HARRIS: We looked at what children see versus what adults see in terms of advertising on television.
GODOY: What they found was a strong relationship between how much advertising was targeted to kids and how much sugary cereals households bought. In fact, nine cereals dominated sales, and all of them were high in sugar. By contrast, ads targeting adults didn't seem to influence purchases.
HARRIS: This study shows that it's really important for these companies with high-sugar cereals to actually reach kids, that parents probably wouldn't buy them if their kids weren't asking them for them.
GODOY: Now, public health officials have long been concerned about the marketing of unhealthy foods to kids. That's why nearly two decades ago, the food industry launched the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a voluntary effort to police itself. Companies pledged to cut back on marketing unhealthy foods to children under 12, later revised to under 13. But Lindsey Smith Taillie, a food policy researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says these voluntary efforts aren't making a difference.
LINDSEY SMITH TAILLIE: For a long time, we've known that junk food marketing to kids was very prevalent in the United States and that it continues to be prevalent despite companies pledging to do better.
GODOY: Smith Taillie says these commercials can create long-term preferences for unhealthy products.
SMITH TAILLIE: We have good data to show that behaviors that are learned in childhood track into adulthood.
GODOY: Which can lead to poor health outcomes over a lifetime. We reached out to the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. In a statement to NPR, they note that the study only looked at ads through 2017. They point to a 2024 study showing children's exposure to cereal ads on TV has dropped dramatically. The author of that study told us that's because TV viewing has declined, and advertisements, like kids' eyeballs, are moving online.
Maria Godoy, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF DINOSAUR JR SONG, "OUTTA HAND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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