New child and adolescent heath research suggests that once the fast food industry has you hooked you on commercials for you to “run for the border”, you are all the more likely to continue those behaviors into adulthood, says the Washington Post.

Interestingly enough, however, it’s not the actual consumption of these foods in the teenage years that results in adult fast food consumption–but the watching of five or more hours of television per day. The connection? Exposure to fast food television ads that drill into our brains the deliciousness of The Whopper.

The conclusion of the study reported in the post is to reduce television viewing to the AAP recommended 2 hours per day. But absent the television police coming into homes across America and turning off the plasma, can there be a more realistic solution, more consistent with parents’ and children’s autonomous choices about how and where and when they watch TV?

Perhaps a better solution would be to change the number, frequency and the content of fast food ads during the prime teen television viewing hours to prevent our adolescents from becoming abundant adult fast food consumers. This type of policy changes puts the onus on television networks and the fast food industry, rather than families and children, to advertise in different ways to the individuals who can make autonomous choices about what to eat–adults–rather than bombarding children with messages throughout their childhood and teen years so that before they even reach the age of maturity are completely programmed. Under the current model, by the time they can drive, they are like zombies on autopilot set to drive to the nearest McDonalds to fuel up on superfood.

In one sense, it’s easier to recommend to parents to turn off the TV than to get the fast food industry not to advertise or to convince the networks not to run the lucrative ads. On the other hand, the downstream implications of an entire generation who is obese and unhealthy because they were seduced by fast food commercials will pay a pretty great price as well. So the question remains: will we change our advertising policy now or ask our children to pay the price over the long term?

Summer Johnson, PhD