Giving the wrong impression: food and beverage brand impressions delivered to youth through popular movies.

BACKGROUND: Marketing on television showcases less-healthful options, with emerging research suggesting movies promote similar products. Given the obesity epidemic, understanding advertising to youth should be a public health imperative. The objective of this study was to estimate youth impressions to food and beverages delivered through movies.

METHODS: Impressions were calculated by dividing US receipts annually into average movie ticket prices, then multiplying this by the number of brand appearances. Examination by ratings, product types and ages were conducted by Spearman rank correlation coefficient tests.

RESULTS: Youth in the USA saw over 3 billion food, beverage or food-retail establishment (FRE) impressions on average, annually from 1996 to 2005. Those aged 12-18 viewed over half of all impressions, with PG-13-rated movies containing 61.5% of impressions. There were no significant trends in brand appearances by food, beverage or FRE impressions over the decade, although there was a decreasing trend in R-rated impressions for both foods (P< 0.01) and beverages (P< 0.01), but not FREs (P= 0.08).

CONCLUSIONS: Movies promote billions of food and beverage impressions annually to youth. Given the public health crisis of obesity, future research should further investigate these trends, as well as the potential association of these unhealthy exposures in youth.