Prevention Matters

A new study published online by the Journal Pediatrics (PDF), takes a first-ever look at the prevalence of food brand placements in popular motion pictures and finds a veritable cornucopia. The Dartmouth Medical School analysis of 200 top box office movie hits that appeared in theaters between 1996 to 2005 yielded a bounty of product placements, mostly for "brands that represent energy-dense, nutrient-poor products and/or product lines."

Researchers identified a total of 1,180 brand placements, including 427 food, 425 beverage, and 328 food retail establishment brand placements. Candy/confections (26%) and salty snacks (21%) were the most prevalent food brands, sugar-sweetened beverages (76%) were the most prevalent beverage brands, and fast food comprised two thirds of the food retail establishment brand placements.

If there were no advertising of unhealthy food on US television, between one in seven and one in three obese American children might not be obese, according a new study in the European Journal of Public Health.

"Limiting the exposure of children to marketing of energy-dense food could be part of a broader effort to make children’s diets healthier, said the study's authors, who built a mathematical simulation model to estimate the potential effects of reducing the exposure of 6- to 12-year-old US children to TV advertising for food on the prevalence of overweight and obesity.

The model was based on body measurements from NHANES 2003–04, the CDC-2000 cut-offs for weight categories, and scientific literature that relates advertising to consumption levels and consumption to body mass.

Los Angeles County officials have rejected requests that they require performers in pornographic films to use condoms. HIV/AIDS activists had demanded such a requirement, to be enforced by county health officials.

"It is very, very difficult to implement. There are roughly 200 production companies with about . . . 1,200 actors," said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's public health chief. "All you need is a room and a camera and a bed, basically, to do this kind of shoot, and we have no ability to police this."

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is a peak time for movie theater attendance and, according to one group, the most recent crop of holiday releases gave tobacco use considerable exposure. Scenesmoking.org, project that routinely rates movies on the extent and type of their tobacco-related content, gave its worst rating - the "black lung" - to five of the top 10 releases on the week of Dec. 28.

"Avatar," "Sherlock Holmes," "The Blind Side," "Nine," and "Did You Hear about the Morgans?" all received "black lung ratings. There was apparently no middle ground for movie-makers, as the rest of the top 10 were deemed "pink lung" movies, which are the group's highest rating. The "pink lung" movies included "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakque," "It's Complicated," "Up in the Air," "The Princess and the Frog," and "Invictus."

Scenesmoking.org is a project of Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails.

CNN reports that Blockbuster movies are less likely to portray smokers than they have in the past, according to a new study. What's more, this decline in on-screen smoking may have occurred in tandem with a drop in the number of adolescents who have lit up in real life.