That the exposure of children to television predisposes to obesity is a fact that we already knew, but it is interesting to know that in addition, cartoon characters can influence the nutritional health of children in one way or another.
According to research from the University of Colorado, cartoon characters Overweight like Homer Simpson, Peppa Pig or Pedro Flintstones could have a negative impact on the children's diet by acting as a trigger of the consumption of foods rich in calories and predisposing to overweight in children.
They were able to observe that after watching overweight characters, children ate greater amounts of candy and cookies. To do this, they did an experiment with 300 children and divided them into three groups: some were shown cartoons with healthy characters, others were shown overweight animation characters and others were not shown any cartoons.
Then, they were allowed to choose between energetic food and low nutrients, to know what each group would choose. The children of the group who had been shown overweight characters they consumed almost twice as much as the others.
This would show that the appearance of overweight animated characters causes children to tend to consume more intensely.
I do not know to what extent the relationship will be blunt, since we must take into account all the factors that predispose to overweight in children beyond TV cartoons.
What I do remember and fits perfectly with what this study says, but vice versa, is that when my oldest daughter watched the children's series Lazy Town or Villa Pereza (do you remember her?) She wanted to eat apples and others. Fruits that will give you energy like the character in the series. Something will influence.
Via | ABC
More information | ScienceDirect
Photo | iStockphoto
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