These 20 Musicians Are The Biggest Shills For Junk Food

In the throwback Pepsi commercial above, circa 2003, Beyoncé struts past a drooling teenage boy on her way to indulge in a Pepsi. "I get that a lot," she says when she notices him staring at her and her beverage of choice. It's a dated advertisement, but there's a problem when celebrities sell products to impressionable teens: They buy them.  And unfortunately, the food and beverages that recording artists tend to endorse are almost exclusively unhealthy, according to a study published this week in the journal Pediatrics.  "Teens are in a unique developmental life stage where they rely on a lot on associating themselves with brands and celebrities to help them define who they are," lead study author Marie Bragg, an assistant professor at NYU's Langone Medical Center and College of Global Public Health, told The Huffington Post. "They may respond more positively to celebrity endorsements than adults."  Teenage susceptibility to celebrity endorsements is especially troubling given that 17 percent of children and adolescents suffer from obesity, according to the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. Studies have shown that exposure to food advertising can encourage people to overeat -- a fact not lost on the food industry, which collectively spends upwards of $1.8 billion per year on youth marketing.  Even worse, the effects of junk food advertising on food consumption is stronger in children than in adults, according to a meta-analysis ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news