The nutritional implications of children's advertising has
been an issue of interest for nearly two decades. This study
examines the relationship between the amount of a child's ex
posure to television commercials and a child's nutritional
awareness. Nutritional awareness is measured by tests for
nutritional knowledge and level of understanding of nutri
tional phraseology. The results indicate that exposure to
television advertising during times characterized by a high
proportion of child-oriented commercials is associated with
lower scores on nutritional knowledge and understanding of
nutritional phraseology. This relationship was not found for
times characterized by a mixture of child- and nonchild-
oriented advertising. Exposure to nonchild-oriented commer
cials was found to correlate with higher nutritional
knowledge scores. The implications of these findings are dis
cussed.
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