Professional Sports Endorsements of Foods and Nonalcoholic Beverages: A Benefit or Risk to the Nutritional Health of Children and Teens :

How many times in watching or listening to a professional sporting event do we see an advertisement appear for a food or nonalcoholic beverage? So how healthy are the foods that are buying the ads that air during these events? Bragg et al. (10.1542/peds.2017-2822) decided to examine this question by sharing results of television viewing data for the ten professional sport organizations that have the most viewers between the ages of 2 and 17 years based on Nielsen rating and then looked to see what kinds of food products were sponsoring these organizations on television, YouTube and sports organization websites from 2006 to 2016. Of the 273 ads promoting sponsorships of these leading sports organizations, more than 75% of foods did not meet healthy nutrition standards, and almost half of the non-alcoholic beverages were sugar sweetened and again unhealthy.  The reach of these sponsorships extended into hundreds of million views inferring that companies are using these organizations to reach out to youth with their ads promoting unhealthy food and nonalcoholic beverages.   There is a lot of food for thought worth digesting in this article that in turn you might want to share with families whose children love watching organizations like the National Football League, the National Hockey League and other sports organizations. Doing so might help such families be more aware and willing to tackle these screen exposures and in turn help educate their children that a product endorsement in association with a sport organization can be hazardous to their nutritional health.