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Heavy television viewing among teens increases risk of depression later in life

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Teenagers who watch a large amount of television are significantly more likely to become depressed later in life according to a longitudinal study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The 2009 study titled Association Between Media Use in Adolescence and Depression in Young Adulthood was conducted by Brian A. Primack, MD, EdM, MS, Brandi Swanier, BA, Anna M. Georgiopoulos, MD, Stephanie R. Land, PhD, and Michael J. Fine, MD, MSc

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Objective and Methodology

These researchers sought to assess the association between media exposure in adolescence and depression in young adulthood. They used a nationally representative sample – the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) – to investigate the relationship between electronic media exposure in 4142 adolescents who were not depressed at baseline and development of depression seven years later. Initially, the teens were asked how many hours they had spent watching television each week. They reported an average of 2.3 hours. Seven years later (at an average age of 21.8), participants were screened again. More than 300, 7.4 percent had developed symptoms consistent with depression.

Findings: More TV Increases Risk of Depression

“Those reporting more television use had significantly greater odds of developing depression for each additional hour of daily television use. In addition, those reporting more total media exposure had significantly greater odds of developing depression for each additional hour of daily use.”

While the researchers did not find a consistent relationship between development of depressive symptoms and exposure to pre-recorded video, computer games, or radio, they did find a statistically significant correlation at the 95% confidence level with television.

Interestingly, they also found that men were more likely than women to develop depression given the same total media exposure.

How Television May Cause Depression

Results suggest that media exposure may influence development of depression through a variety of factors. Some are related to the medium itself, others to content.

Relating to the medium itself, the researchers theorize that:

  • Time spent passively watching television could displace more positive interaction with family and friends
  • The audio and video could energize the senses in ways that contribute to poor sleep.
  • Excessive viewing could interfere with development of good thinking skills, and potentially contribute to cognitive distortions.

Regarding potential links related to content, the researchers point to facts such as:

  • Large amounts of advertising which may present adolescents with unattainable images
  • Role models that exhibit high degrees of risk taking behaviors
  • Stereotypical characters that may affect self-image
  • Anxiety-provoking shows.

Why is this so crucial? The authors point to other studies that show:

  • Depression is the leading cause of nonfatal disability worldwide.1
  • Because onset of depression is common in adolescence and young adulthood,2, 3 it coincides with a pivotal period of physical and psychological development.
  • Depression can lead to poorer psychosocial functioning, lower life and career satisfaction, more interpersonal difficulty, greater need for social support, other related psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, and increased risk of suicide.4, 5

My Take

It should be noted that since this study was conducted four years ago, television viewing among teens has increased. Many now use it as a background medium while multitasking. Through multitasking, teens are now exposed to an average of 10.5 hours of media content per day – up TWO HOURS per day from an average of 8.5 hours when these researchers conducted their study.

To be sure, not all of those 10.5 hours are spent on television, but the trend is alarming – especially when you conider that internet addiction (IA) is also becoming a problem among teens and that IA has also been linked to depression. (See previous post.) This could help explain, in part, a 400% increase in the use of antidepressants reported by the CDC.

In my next post, I’ll explore the relationship between multitasking and depression.

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  1. Lopez AD, Mathers CD, Ezzati M, Jamison DT, Murray CJ. Global and regional burden of disease and risk factors, 2001: systematic analysis of population health data. Lancet. 2006;367(9524):1747–1757. [PubMed]
  2. Blazer DG, Kessler RC, McGonagle KA, Swartz MS. The prevalence and distribution of major depression in a national community sample: the National Comorbidity Survey. Am J Psychiatry. 1994;151(7):979–986. [PubMed]
  3. Commission on Adolescent Depression and Bipolar Disorder . Depression and bipolar disorder. In: Evans DL, Foa EB, Gur RE, et al., editors. Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders: What We Know and What We Don’t Know: A Research Agenda for Improving the Mental Health of Our Youth. Oxford University Press; New York, NY: 2005.
  4. Paradis AD, Reinherz HZ, Giaconia RM, Fitzmaurice G. Major depression in the transition to adulthood: the impact of active and past depression on young adult functioning. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2006;194(5):318–323. [PubMed]
  5. Reinherz HZ, Giaconia RM, Hauf AM, Wasserman MS, Silverman AB. Major depression in the transition to adulthood: risks and impairments. J Abnorm Psychol. 1999;108(3):500–510. [PubMed]

Will news consumption preferences change media crisis coverage?

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In 2004, Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, published a poignant essay entitled Media Crisis Coverage: To Serve and to Scare. It was published in the Journal of Media Psychology.

Professor Fishoff examines what he calls the “dysfunctional partnership between the media and the public in our increasingly media-centric lives.”  He describes the intimate, adrenaline-fueled dance between viewers and producers of television crisis coverage and observes:

“The thin line between gut-wrenching, vital information and a news-sponsored horror show begins its fade to oblivion.”

In 2001, days after 9/11, a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project titled How Americans Used the Internet After the Terror Attack found that 81% of all Americans said they got most of their information from TV; only 3% of Internet users got most of their information about the attacks from the Internet.”

In his essay Media Crisis Coverage, Fischoff observed:

“During a crisis, many viewers, particularly those with 24-hour cable news shows, seek out the constant drumbeat of news coverage to stay informed and reduce the stress that accompanies uncertainty.  But watching hours of crisis coverage footage can often have the opposite effect.  Visual images go directly to the most primitive parts of our psyche, pushing all the fear buttons.  Anxiety is elevated.  People watch in order to calm themselves.  The more they watch, the more they want to watch because the more anxious they feel.  And the cycle continues.”

To reduce the psychological trauma and anxiety of being drawn into news/horror shows, Fischoff made a number of recommendations. One had to do with the size of the screen that viewers used to watch crisis coverage.

“Shrink the size of the image,” said Fischoff.  “Here is another example of when size matters: According to Detenber (1996), size is important to emotional response. It is important to babies in perceiving others, and to adults when watching a movie in a theater. Image size positively affects the arousal and dominance dimensions of emotional responses. Size is a primitive heuristic (in animals, for example, who is prey and who is predator, or who is too powerful to safely take on) that influences a range of judgments. Films seen as large images on a screen elicit stronger feelings of arousal than the same films when viewed on small screens disbursing small images.”

After reading this essay, I began to wonder about two things:

  • Will the trend toward getting news from the Internet, especially via smartphones and tablets, reduce the traumatic stress that people feel when viewing crisis coverage? Their screens are much smaller than televisions’ (70″ LED screens seem to be the current norm for new TVs).
  • In times of real crises, such as 9/11, will people revert back to getting news from TV because of the “quality” of coverage it presents?

Fast forward ten years. By 2011, Pew found that “The internet now trails only television among American adults as a destination for news, and the trend line shows the gap closing.” The report also found that in December 2010, 41% of Americans cited the internet as the place where they got “most of their news about national and international issues,” up 17% from a year earlier.

Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project

 My Take

Current Internet news coverage fundamentally differs from television news coverage. It tends to be more text than video focused, although this is beginning to change with increases in bandwidth. The comparative lack of video and sound remove much of the visceral “you-are-there” impact of crisis coverage. And if digital coverage becomes too repetitive, i.e., with endless reruns of the Twin Towers falling, viewers can easily switch “channels” or topics. The Internet offers millions of URL’s to choose from.

I suspect that the shift to digital news consumption will have a psychologically mitigating effect on consumers. I also suspect, for television producers, the real horror show will be their bottom line.

Impact of Media on Child Health

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I have long felt that in the Information Age, media are like the air we breath and the water we drink – necessary for life, but sometimes toxic and often unhealthy. Browsing this morning, I found this group: The Center for Media and Child Health (CMCH).

videogameAt Children’s Hospital Boston, the Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health, this group is dedicated to understanding and responding to the effects of media on the physical, mental, and social health of children through research, translation, and education.

They have found that young people spend more time using media—TV, movies, music, computers, Internet, cell phones, magazines, and video games—than engaging in any other single activity except sleep. Their site is a treasure trove of scientific research related to these topics.

According to the Center for Media and Child Health:

The media that children use and create are integral to their growing sense of themselves, of the world, and of how they should interact with it. These pervasive, persuasive influences have been linked to both negative health outcomes, such as smoking, obesity, sexual risk behaviors, eating disorders and poor body image, anxiety, and violence, and to positive outcomes, such as civil participation, positive social behavior, tolerance, school readiness, knowledge acquisition, and positive self-image. For any given child, which effects occur depends largely on the media’s content, the child’s age, the context in which the child uses media, the amount of media the child uses, and whether that use is active and critical.”

 

To create positive rather than negative outcomes, they propose five Five Cs, which I summarize below:

  • Control time
    Limit media use to an amount appropriate for your child’s age.
  • Filter Content
    All media educate. Some teach healthy lessons, others harmful.
  • Influence Context.
    Where, when, how, why, and with whom kids use media can enrich or harm them.
  • Teach Critical thinking
    It’s essential for healthy development.
  • Create media mastery
    Show kids how to think about media they use, instead of passively consuming it.

My Take

To kids, media represent a way to explore the world, stay connected, share experiences, identify with groups, and show off. They’re a badge of belonging. They’re a gateway to information, entertainment and temptation.

Research shows that kids consume up to seven hours per day of media (ten and a half hours if you factor in multitasking). Nothing will influence the type of adults that kids become more than you and the media they consume. The wise parent will teach kids to use media time wisely. I read that in a fortune cookie, so I know it must be true.

Impact of Television Screens on Nervous Tics

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According to the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, tics are sudden, painless, nonrhythmic behaviors that appear out of context. Simple motor tics are brief, meaningless movements like eye blinking, facial grimacing, head jerks or shoulder shrugs. They usually last less than one second, but can last longer, occur frequently and be more serious..

For those who have never witnessed this affliction, YouTube posted a video of a tic-stricken person watching TV. Tics are often related to a more severe related disorder called Tourette’s Syndrome.

Tics Related to TV Viewing and Video Games

A UK group called Tourette’s Action says that tics usually increase with stress, tiredness and boredom and are often prominent when watching television.

Many others note an association between tics and television watching. However, the cause is not fully understood. Some psychologists believe that tics can be suppressed through concentration; they attribute tic outbursts to relaxation while watching TV. Others see the flickering lights of TV and video games as the culprits. Still others see tics as a genetic disorder and believe that environmental factors may trigger them.

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CRT flicker is imperceptible to most people but may be related to tics in others.

An article posted by The American Nutrition Association in Nutrition Digest notes several types of hypersensitivities associated with tics and says “Television and video games both have a high frequency flicker that doesn’t bother most of us, but often triggers tics. TV and computer video games watched by toddlers are linked to ADHD as well as tics.”

The Association for Comprehensive NeuroTherapy (ACN) which explores treatments for tics and other neurological disorders sponsors a forum for parents of children with tics. A review of the postings on the forum found that 20 of 27 (74 percent) of parents who eliminated screen viewing for at least a week saw a significant reduction in their children’s tics. Most children with screen sensitivity also had food sensitivities. Several parents noted that correcting food issues, such as hypersensitivity to yeast, eliminated the screen sensitivity.

A comprehensive book on the subject, Natural Treatments for Tics and Tourette’s: A Patient and Family Guide, by Sheila J. Rogers contains numerous stories from parents who found that eliminating or restricting television viewing for children with tics lessened the symptoms.

The book also refers to reports from Japan about eye twitching, muscle twitching and in rare cases, even seizures associated with playing video games. Rogers cites warnings printed in Nintendo manuals starting in 2004.

The good news: Rogers reports that tics were most frequently observed while subjects were viewing cathode ray tubes (CRTs) which have much more pronounced flicker than the LCD, plasma and LED screens being sold today.

A neurotransmitter inside the brain called dopamine may trigger tics in people with hypersensitivity to light. Light strongly affects the body’s production of dopamine. Victoria L. Dunckley, M.D., wrote in Psychology Today:
“Since video games and computer use increase dopamine, and tics are dopamine-related, it’s understandable that electronic media worsen tics.  For bothersome tics, I recommend a three week “electronic fast” to normalize brain chemistry and improve sleep (restful sleep improves tics in and of itself).”

We have all become dependent on electronic media; it’s hard to fathom life without screens. This is one more example of how media can impact life in surprising ways.

Screen Fixation and Attention Deficit Disorder

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While searching for information about the relationship between ADD and different types of monitors, I came across a touching story in the New York Times. Published in 2011 by Perri Klass, M.D., the article titled “Fixated by Screens, but Seemingly Nothing Else” began with the story of boy whose teacher thought he had attention deficit disorder. The teacher urged the boy’s mother to have him tested: “He can’t sit still … He’s always getting into trouble.”

The mother felt her son could not have attention deficit disorder because he could sit for hours concentrating on video games. The physician had heard it all before. He said, “Sometimes parents make the same point about television: My child can sit and watch for hours — he can’t have A.D.H.D.”

“In fact, a child’s ability to stay focused on a screen, though not anywhere else, is actually characteristic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are complex behavioral and neurological connections linking screens and attention, and many experts believe that these children do spend more time playing video games and watching television than their peers.”

But researchers, the article continues, are still trying to determine whether the screen fixation is a cause or an effect of attention disorders.

Some researchers, according to Klass, feel that flickering screens may reward the brain by releasing the neurotransmitter dopamine and therefore attract children with deficit disorders. The brains of these children may be deficient in dopamine and they are, in effect, self-medicating with video.

Other researchers fear video may cause deficit disorders. Klass says, “Some studies have found that children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop attention problems later on.”

He cited a 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics. It found that viewing more television and playing more video games were associated with subsequent attention problems in both schoolchildren and college undergraduates. The theory goes something like this. In video games, the need to keep responding rapidly in order to win creates hyper-alertness that makes the real world seem under-stimulating by comparison.

My Take

Regardless of the cause/effect question posed above, these studies show that exposure to television and video games can affect brain chemistry over the long term. These visual mediums have the power to affect how we feel, how we think, and how we interact with those around us. Tomorrow, I will write about several affective disorders related to television usage that I have personally observed and documented.

Using Social Media to Detect Poor Quality Health Care

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In an era when a growing number of patients are using social media to describe their patient experiences, some health care professionals are suggesting that mining the “cloud of patient experience” could be an interesting way to help professionals improve that experience.

The idea is proposed in a “viewpoint” article entitled “Harnessing the cloud of patient experience: using social media to detect poor quality healthcare” published online by BMJ Quality and Safety in January 2013. The authors, F. Greaves, D Ramirez-Cano, C Millett, A Darzi and L Donaldson, of the Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, say that:

“We believe the increasing availability of patients’ accounts of their care on blogs, social networks, Twitter and hospital review sites presents an intriguing opportunity to advance the patient-centred care agenda and provide novel  quality of care data.”

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They outline how collecting and aggregating patients’ descriptions of their experiences on the internet could be used to detect both poor and high quality clinical care. The process involves “natural language processing and sentiment analysis to transform unstructured descriptions of patient experience on the internet into usable measures of healthcare performance.” The authors conclude by discussing whether these new techniques could detect poor performance before conventional measures of healthcare quality could.

My Take

Many industries use data mining to gather business intelligence and detect trends in markets. The financial industry uses it to develop credit scores. Actuaries use it to assess risk for insurance companies. Other applications include quality assurance, cross-selling, fraud detection, stock market prediction, direct marketing and customer retention, to name just a few.

In all of these examples, people use computers to turn large amounts of unstructured data into usable knowledge that can help predict outcomes and improve performance.

If you’ve had a hospital stay recently, you probably received a questionnaire asking you to rate your experience. The purpose of these questionnaires is to gather feedback that leads to improved performance. A local hospital administrator told me recently that these ratings affect hospitals’ compensation by several percent – a powerful motive to improve.

But people are often reluctant to offer negative feedback – especially to people that their health depends on. They don’t want to be “problem patients” that providers shun; they have a natural tendency to want to say positive things TO the people they deal with. However, under the veil of anonymity that the Internet provides, they frequently show no restraint in saying negative things ABOUT their experiences with people, companies and institutions. I call this the Venting Effect. When you have a negative experience, just getting all those boiling feelings out of your head helps manage the pain.

Professionals can improve healthcare by capturing and analyzing this information. The hospital administrator mentioned above told me a poignant story about how his staff reduced lung infections after surgery from nearly 50 percent to virtually zero within five years. They used “best practices” determined from mining CDC data. Broadening the scope to include data mined from social networks may yield equally beneficial results.

Impact of TV Commercials on Preschooler Food Preferences

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The Journal of the American Dietetic Association published a study from the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention in January 2001 titled: The 30-second effect: an experiment revealing the impact of television commercials on food preferences of preschoolers.

DL Borzekowski and TN Robinson, the study’s authors, sought to determine whether televised food commercials influence preschool children’s food preferences.

Study Design

They divided 46 2- to 6-year-old preschool children into two groups. One saw a videotape of a popular cartoon with a commercial embedded in it. The control group saw the cartoon, but without the commercial. The children, from a Head Start program in northern California, were then asked to identify their preferences from pairs of similar products, one of which had been advertised in the embedded commercials.

Findings and Implications

They found that children exposed to commercials were significantly more likely to choose the advertised items than children who were not. They concluded that even brief exposures to televised food commercials can influence food preferences within this age group.

Further, the authors advised adults to limit  preschooler’s exposure to television advertisements. They also raised a public policy issue – given the epidemic of childhood obesity – about advertising to young children.

My Take

From personal experience, both as a parent and advertising-industry professional, I believe that this age group lacks the cognitive capabilities to differentiate commercials from programming. Thus, they are exceptionally vulnerable at a time when they are forming preferences and habits that could influence the trajectory of their lives.

Hit the pause button for a moment of ethical reflection.

Kids like “fun.” (Don’t we all?) Advertisers know this and so they pack commercials targeted at kids with flashy animation, bright colors, happy music and fantasy characters. These are the tools of the trade. Advertising targeted at adults uses the same tools for the same reasons.

VeggieHeartIf the products and services being advertised are not harmful, I believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with this. We should also remember that television is a competitive marketplace of ideas. Nothing prevents anyone from using the same tools to encourage consumption of healthy foods like Popeye cartoons once did.

Late in life, I gained a significant amount of weight from eating too much unhealthy food. After nutritional counseling, I began eating virtually nothing but lean meats, vegetables and fruits. I lost eighty pounds, nine inches from my waistline, and feel infinitely better now.

However, a curious thing happened in the process. Much of the food advertising I see on TV now repulses me. What used to make me drool – gooey cheese in pizza commercials, for instance – now makes my stomach turn back-flips. Seriously, it’s such an unpleasant feeling that I must look away from the TV. Someone needs to research this phenomenon to see if a heart healthy diet is the best defense against the seductive pull of advertising for less healthy foods – among children and adults. There could be something happening on a cellular level here. When I was fat and tried to diet, the first two weeks were always the hardest. Every time I saw one of those gooey pizza commercials, it triggered cravings. Now, the opposite happens.

Anncr VO:  “And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.”

Cell Phones Affect Kids’ Sleep: Need for Digital Curfews

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A personal anecdote: I am writing this at 3:00 a.m. after being woken up by a text message on my wife’s cell phone (which she fell asleep with) at 1:38 a.m. The message was from our son who lives two time zones west of Houston. No emergency. He just wanted to tell my wife that he received something she emailed.

I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. So I started wondering if other people had this same problem, i.e., being awakened by electronic gadgets. To the google search bar! The Center on Media and Child Health lists it as a hot topic.

In Perspectives on Parenting, Karen Jacobson, MA, LCPC, LMFT and Lauren Bondy, MSW, suggest setting a digital curfew.

“The playground for tweens and teens today is electronic,” they say. “kids today are roaming, playing, forming relationships, testing limits, making mistakes, exploring, experimenting, and forming their identities and values in online digital spaces.”

Studies [1][2][3] show that sleep is interrupted when teens receive texts at night. Likewise, homework is interrupted and children become distracted when they receive notifications of a new chat messages, texts, or emails. To avoid a daily battle, the authors suggest that parents make a time when all media are off limits into part of the routine. Other recommendations the authors make include:

  • Involving kids in establishing a media plan for their entire day, and agree on weekday and weekend hours.
  • Allowing social media time only after homework is done or during homework breaks.
  • Asking kids, “What’s the best place to charge your cell phone and keep it from distracting you?”

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Cell phones are rapidly becoming an integral part of kids’ lives. According to research by C&R Research, 22 percent of young children own a cell phone (ages 6-9), 60 percent of tweens (ages 10-14), and 84 percent of teens (ages 15-18. And cell phone companies are now marketing to younger children with colorful kid-friendly phones and easy-to-use features. According to market research firm the Yankee Group, 54 percent of 8 to12 year olds will have cell phones within the next three years.

These studies and observations suggest that growing and uncontrolled cell phone use among children can have a detrimental impact on their sleep which, in turn, can make them tired the next day and affect their ability to learn in school.

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1. Irregular bedtime and nocturnal cellular phone usage as risk factors for being involved in bullying: A cross-sectional survey of Japanese adolescents by Tochigi, Mamoru;Nishida, Atsushi;Shimodera, Shinji;Oshima, Norihito;Inoue, Ken;Okazaki, Yuji;Sasaki, Tsukasa, 2012

2. Adolescent use of mobile phones for calling and for sending text messages after lights out: Results from a prospective cohort study with a one-year follow-up by van den Bulck, Jan, 2007

3. Text messaging as a cause of sleep interruption in adolescents, evidence from a cross-sectional study by van den Bulck, Jan, 2003

via CMCH.tv.

 

Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior

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A 2009 study by Jennifer L. Harris, John A. Bargh, and Kelly D. Brownell of Yale University published in Health Psychology and titled Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior poses some interesting questions about whether exposure to food advertising stimulates the appetite even when you are not hungry. The study sheds light on how exposure to food advertising may contribute to the obesity epidemic which both a U.S. Surgeon General and World Health Organization have labeled a leading cause of death, disease and disability. WomanEatingBurger

The study tested the hypothesis that exposure to food advertising during TV viewing contributed to obesity by triggering the urge to snack on available food.

The researchers studied two groups: elementary-school-age children and adults.

Children watched a cartoon that contained either food or non-food advertising and received a snack while watching.

Adults watched a TV program that included food advertising that promoted:

  • Fun product benefits
  • Nutrition benefits

They also measured a control group that saw no food advertising. The adults then tasted and evaluated a range of healthy to unhealthy snack foods in an apparently separate experiment.

For both children and adults, they measured the amount of snack foods consumed during and after exposure to the advertising.

They found that:

  • Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising.
  • Adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising compared to the control group.

They concluded, “In both groups, food advertising increased consumption of products not advertised. This effect was not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences.” They say that their experiments “demonstrate the power of food advertising to prime automatic eating behaviors and thus influence far more than brand preference alone.”

My take: People overeat for many reasons. This study shows the power of television to stimulate the appetite is one of them. However, it doesn’t address how much television contributes to overeating compared to other causes. That’s not criticism, just an observation about the study’s scope.

Speaking as someone who suffered serious health consequences from overeating and who recently shed 80 pounds, I found that my obesity was largely related to eating too many high-calorie meals at restaurants.

The meals were both over-portioned and high in fat. I began losing weight simply by becoming more aware of the caloric content of my foods through a 99-cent iPhone app. It helped me make healthier food choices. I also began vigorously exercising for an hour each day. I still watch just as much television as I always have.

I suspect that the priming effect discussed in this study is a contributing cause to obesity but not the main cause. Insofar as television influences food choice, we should also not forget that it can influence food choice in a positive direction. In my opinion, the largest factors contributing to obesity are lack of conscious thought about:

  • How many calories we consume each day
  • How poor food choices can negatively impact health.

All that food on television may look appetizing, but after $250,000 bypass surgery, believe me, a 99-cent iPhone app looks far more appealing.

Impact of Nutrition Information on Food Choice

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Two University of Minnesota researchers studied the impact of nutrition information provided through popular media on consumers’ purchases in grocery stores. They studied omega-3 fortified eggs as an example. According to the authors, Sakiko Shiratori and Jean Kinsey, the results showed a significant positive impact of nutritional information from the popular media on consumers’ food choices. They also found that publishing stories  in popular media can effectively promote consumers’ health.

They conclude, “The impact of nutritional information from the popular media on consumers’ food choices is substantial. Although Omega-3 fortified eggs usually sell at a premium price compared to the typical eggs, growing knowledge of the health benefits of Omega-3 propels their consumption. To change dietary behaviors in order to promote health, publishing in popular media can be said to be an effective communication approach.”

The 2011 study takes into account other factors contributing to food choices such as price, income, household demographics or regional differences.

Positive, scientific nutritional information presented in a variety of mass media shifted  consumer demand.

My take on this: This study makes a pretty compelling case for PR when food companies have a positive story to tell. In future posts, I’ll discuss other studies related to media and food. I began my career in food advertising and worked on food accounts almost exclusively for my first ten years in the advertising industry.

If you’ve never heard of Omega-3 Eggs, this article provides a good summary. The heart you save may be your own.