Children’s exposure to fast food advertising results in significantly higher calorie intake among children and adolescents throughout the day, regardless of the type of media advertisement, according to a study presented at this year’s European Obesity Conference (ECO) in Málaga, Spain.

Researchers aimed to quantify the impact of children’s exposure to food advertisements and to assess whether food intake is influenced by the content of the advertisement or by the type of media. The study included 240 children aged 7-15 years from a school in Merseyside County, England. Participants were exposed for five minutes to advertisements for unhealthy foods and then to non-food advertisements across four types of media: audiovisual (such as television), visual (social media posts), auditory (podcasts), and static (print billboards).

The study found that children exposed to just five minutes of ads for foods high in saturated fats, sugar, and/or salt consumed an average of 130 extra calories per day, equivalent to the calories in two slices of bread. Specifically, they consumed more snacks (+58.4 calories), more lunch (+72.5 calories), and overall more food (snacks and lunch combined +130.9 calories) compared to after exposure to non-food advertisements.

Interestingly, the content of the advertisement did not mitigate this effect, and branded ads were just as effective as product ads in increasing food intake. Additionally, neither the type of media nor the socioeconomic status of the families moderated calorie intake.