Fast-food ad ban could cut child obesity

Banning fast-food advertising on television in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent. But the team at the National Bureau of Economic Research questioned whether it would be practical to impose that kind of government regulation -- something only Sweden, Norway and Finland have done. For their study, funded in part by the federal government, Chou and colleagues used data on nearly 13,000 children from the 1979 Child-Young Adult National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

"The advertising measure used is the number of hours of spot television fast-food restaurant advertising messages seen per week," researchers wrote in the Journal of Law and Economics. "Our results indicate that a ban on these advertisements would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3-11 in a fixed population by 18 percent and would reduce the number of overweight adolescents ages 12-18 by 14 percent."

Steve - unfortunately, this probably will not happen because the fast food conglomerates are so large and vital now to investors (they are some of the select few who are performing well in these economic times). It would also crush the McDonald's gold standard marketing model which is to get in the minds of youths early and often. If accomplished, you have a customer for life.