The pediatricians of US want to restrict advertisements of junk foods which target children, told that they plot with inactive behavior like watching television and playing video games to increase the weight of children.

“Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have to get tough with the food industry,” said Dr. Victor Strasburger, who had written the recent policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a group of 65,000 physicians.

One in every six children and teenagers in the United States are fat- more than three times from couple of years back, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Thirty years ago, the federal government ruled that young children are psychologically defenseless against advertising. Now, kids see 5,000 to 10,000 food ads per year, most of them for junk food and fast food,” Strasburger said.

The statement of AAP is released which says public health officials, lawmakers and parents become more irritated with increasing rates of childhood obesity and weak anti-obesity efforts from restaurant owners and food and beverage firms.

“There is massive marketing of the worst foods, even to children under age 5. It is toxic and until it stops there is little hope of dealing with obesity,” said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Little Government Efforts

The expenditure of U.S. on food marketing targets children aged 2 to 17 through television, Internet, video games, text messages and other ways might be $1.6 billion per year, the Institute of Medicine told in a report last week.

In a previous report, “Food Marketing to Children and Youth,” the institute finished that there is enough proof which shows that introduction of TV advertisement is linked to weight gain in children of 2 to 111 years of age.

The association of firms of U.S. food told that they have reduced direct marketing to children and implied mandatory rules to follow. They discovered loopholes in the statement issued by AAP.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association told that it was based largely on obsolete research that does not properly show the marketplace and trends.

“It’s an ineffective approach to blame childhood obesity on advertising, when the report points to multiple factors, including sedentary behavior, inadequate amount of sleep and increased screen time,” said Joy Dubost, director of nutrition for the National Restaurant Association.”

In every public health crisis we’ve had — whether it’s smoking or drinking or obesity — the industry involved blames the individual, the parent or the consumer,” he said.

Along with encouraging better eating habits, AAP and other health specialist’s appeal strongly to parents to keep an eye on the time children watch TV, working on computers or playing video games as it initiates idleness and sleep disturbances.

The supporters of public health also went to court and local laws to pursue the food industry to alter its trends.

In the later half of last year, the Center for Science in the Public Interest took legal action against McDonald Corporation to refrain the world’s biggest restaurant chain from providing free toys with its product Happy Meals to attract children to its restaurants.

Representatives of law in San Francisco and nearby Santa Clara County have enforced laws that will require meals of kids to meet some nutritional standards prior to being sold with toys.

McDonald’s denied to say anything.