According to a recent study, most cartoon characters aren’t meant to be a positive influence on children; they’re supposed to be entertaining. But some cartoons can be downright detrimental to a child’s health. The study that was published this week in the Journal of Consumer Psychology confirms the above.
Cartoon characters who are on the heavy side, from Porky Pig to Winnie the Pooh to Homer Simpson, can encourage kids to overindulge in junk food. Given the childhood obesity crisis in the United States, where more than a third of kids are overweight or obese according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the results of the study suggest that parents, animators and marketers should be more mindful of the effect images on television, movies, video games and other media have on children’s habits, which can follow them into adulthood.
Researchers at the University of Colorado – Boulder studied children between six and 14 years old who viewed cartoon characters that were either a healthy weight or overweight. After viewing the cartoons, the researchers presented the test participants with a selection of cookies and candy, low-nutrition, high-calorie snacks that could very well be part of any child’s normal cartoon-watching routine.
What the researchers found was that kids exposed to the overweight characters ate almost twice as much junk food as those looking at cartoon characters with more healthy physiques or those who didn’t watch cartoons at all. The overweight characters do not even need to resemble humans to have an influential effect, the researchers found. Egg-shaped characters, such as the fast-food-loving Grimace from the McDonald’s franchise, were identified as overweight by children.
According to a previous study cited by the researchers, cartoon characters also show human emotions and behaviors, leading children to identify with them as people and apply social traits to these characters. Children can also be prone to emulate individuals, even fictional, with whom they identify.
The study concluded that a child would be more likely to overeat after seeing an overweight cartoon character due to a concept known as stereotype priming. This means that based on the results of the experiment, children understand the link between eating unhealthy foods and the physique that results from that behavior. In fact, children develop body weight stereotypes between ages 3 and 4, the researchers wrote.
Unhealthy eating habits fuel weight gain and conditions like obesity. The combination of a poor diet and excess weight has led to an increasing number of diagnoses among children for conditions typically only seen in adults, such as fatty liver disease, osteoporosis, sleep apnea, hypertension and more, the Chicago Tribune reported last month.
Children who grow up with unhealthy diets may also end up with weight-control issues as they age, posing a range of potential health risks linked with obesity. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), childhood obesity is associated with a higher risk of disability and non-communicable disease, such as diabetes and heart disease, after reaching adulthood.
In the recent past popular Indian toon character Chhota Bheem also received a lot of flak for propagating junk food in the form of gorging on ladoos and getting his powers.