Unhealthy Entertainment?

By Quinn Phillips Movie theaters have never been a friendly environment for healthy eating, with all of the fat-and-salt-drenched popcorn, candy, and sugary beverages for sale. But most diet-conscious people probably take comfort in the notion that once the movie begins, they'll be swept away to a world free of sweet, salty, crunchy temptation and concerns about body weight. According to a recent study, however, this may be a false assumption if you're seeing one particular kind of movie: one whose target audience is children. For this study, conducted at the University of North Carolina Medical School and published earlier this month in the journal Obesity, researchers set out to explore the messages that children's movies send about eating and weight. As noted in a campus news release, they examined the four highest-grossing G- or PG-rated movies of each year from 2006 to 2010, resulting in a total of 20 movies that included Kung Fu Panda, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel, and Shrek the Third. Each movie was divided into 10-minute segments for analysis, and each segment was scored individually by multiple researchers. Each researcher gave points for a segment based on whether characters acted consistently with the American Academy of Pediatrics' obesity prevention recommendations, whether obesity was stigmatized, and whether behaviors were generally healthy, unhealthy, or neutral. Researchers' scores were in agreement more than 85% of the time. Out of all movie segmen...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs