Heroes Of Cartoon Films Promote Fast Food

Heroes Of Cartoon Films Promote Fast Food.
Popular children's movies, from "Kung Fu Panda" to "Shrek the Third," hold back mongrel messages about eating habits and obesity, a strange study says. Many of these animated and live-action movies are ashamed of "glamorizing" unhealthy eating and inactivity, while at the same time condemning obesity, according to study corresponding initiator Dr Eliana Perrin, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. She and her colleagues analyzed 20 top-grossing G- and PG-rated movies from 2006 to 2010.

Clips from each flick were examined for their depictions of eating, incarnate activity and obesity. The findings show that many acclaimed children's movies "present a mixed message to children: promoting valetudinary behaviors while stigmatizing the behaviors' possible effects," the researchers said.

Among the movie segments that included eating, 26 percent featured exaggerated assignment sizes, 51 percent included destructive snacks and 19 percent included sugar-sweetened beverages, according to the study published online Dec 6, 2013 in the gazette Obesity. In terms of activity, 40 percent of the movies showed characters watching television, 35 percent featured characters using computers, and 20 percent showed characters playing video games.

Unhealthy moving picture segments outnumbered salutary ones by two to one, according to the researchers. They also found that nearly three-quarters of the films included antipathetic weight-related messages. For instance, a panda who wants to be a courageous arts master is told he can't because of his "fat butt," "flabby arms" and "ridiculous belly" look at this. And a donkey is referred to as a "bloated roadside pinata".