The June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association discusses a new study comparing the nutritional content of food choices influenced by television to nutritional guidelines.

Researchers analyzed 84 hours of primetime and 12 hours of Saturday morning broadcast television over a 28-day period on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

No big surprise here. Investigators found that a 2,000-calorie diet consisting entirely of advertised foods would contain 25 times the recommended servings of sugars and 20 times the recommended servings of fat, but less than half of the recommended servings of vegetables, dairy, and fruits.

In fact, the excess of servings in sugars and fat is so large that, on average, eating just one of the observed food items would provide more than three times the recommended daily servings (RDS) for sugars and two and a half times the RDS for fat for the entire day. 

Although most people do not claim to base their diets solely on the advertised foods, researchers say they’ve learned through previous studies that television is a primary source for nutrition information in America.

So a good general rule would be to avoid eating any foods that are advertised on TV!