Summary

Reducing children’s exposure to advertisements promoting unhealthy foods and beverages has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a key strategy to improve children’s diets and reduce childhood obesity. In this repeated cross-sectional study of children’s exposure to food-related television advertisements, exposure via children’s programming decreased substantially. However, most advertisements seen were still for unhealthy products, and exposure from all programming remained substantial. Findings of more than 90% of advertising exposure not from children’s programming and more than 1000 food-related advertisements seen per year suggest the need for government regulations based on time of day rather than programming.