Even as childhood obesity has doubled since the early 1990s among two to four-year-olds and trebled for six to 15-year-olds, a recent parental survey conducted by the Somerfield chain of food stores found children increasingly owe their harmful food habits to TV characters particularly to comic heroes like doughnut loving Homer of ‘The Simpsons’.
The survey that covered 1,949 British parents indicated that over 54 per cent gave in to their child’s choice of food, with 57 per cent of parents afraid of broaching the topic of healthy eating with their children fearing a confrontation. Worse still the survey found that cartoon heroes played a role in children’s food habits, with 59 per cent of parents saying that the character Homer Simpson promoted to viewers an unhealthy lifestyle, while 10 percent accorded the same ignominy to Big Brother contestants' with their yen for alcohol, fries and sugary foods. Jamie Oliver's effort to better school meals was rated by 21 percent as "naff".
The web survey conducted last month by the food chain yielded surprising results as to the extent children’s TV viewing had affected their eating habits with a spokesman saying "the research suggests that we need some new and credible role models that can help in the campaign to make healthy eating cool amongst kids".
In an earlier Somerfield commissioned survey of 1,029 Briton 8 to 12 year olds, it was found that over two thirds knowingly fell short of eating the daily five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables, with 12-year-olds being the worst in adhering to the recommended diet. The survey revealed better promotion of dietary care in primary schools than secondary schools, while children across age groups had poor awareness of food : 20 per cent believed beef was some sort of pig’s meat, over 12 per cent understood cheese to come from butter, over 15 per cent assumed broccoli was a baby tree and twenty percent unable to say what a courgette was.
Paul Sacher who founded the Institute of Child Health's Mend Programme in UK, which collaborates with families to promote healthier lifestyles, felt that the recent Somerfield study revealed a "potentially serious problem". With food chains and the government keen on improving the health of the next generation and cutting ballooning public health care, there is a need to appeal to children through the medium they best understand – the TV. Probably some more room for characters like Popeye to flex spinach muscles and relate to the Generation Now before they give health a total pass by.
