Another Reason to Limit Screen Time

We all know that children need to get up and move around more and watch tv less!  We also know that many of the advertisements during childrens' television programming are for foods that are less than stellar nutrient-wise.  So, the results of a recent study may not be surprising, but should make us even more motivated to limit screen time for kids. 

A study reported in the June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association has shown that if you based your diet entirely on foods that you saw in tv ads, you would eat 25 times the recommended servings of sugar, and 20 times the recommended servings of fat in your daily diet.  The foods featured on tv ads not only had too much sugar and fat, but also oversupplied sodium (not a surprise either considering most of the sodium in the American diet comes from processed and restaurant food).  Additionally, if you followed this "tv ad diet" you would be deficient in 12 important nutrients such as vitamin A, D and E.