According to a new study, huge number of commercials during shows for kids on network and cable TV are on products, which consist of too much added sugar, saturated fat or sodium. The advertised food was compared with earlier proposed US nutrition guidelines for foods marketed to kids.

According to lead author Melanie D. Hingle of the University of Arizona in Tucson, the proposal was not approved and majority of companies continued making and advertising unhealthy products on TV.

According to Hingle, it is not acceptable. She told Reuters Health, "The take home message is really not about what would be or could be, but that this independent group of experts in different communities said these are guidelines that make sense nutritionally, and hardly any of these ads meet these guidelines".

In 2011, a proposal for standards for the nutritional quality of foods advertised to children was issued by an Interagency Working Group on Foods Marketed to Children (IWG) together with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration.

According to their proposal, saturated fat was limited to 1 gram or less, sodium to 210 milligrams or less, trans fat to less than 0.05 grams and added sugars to 13 grams or less per individual product serving size.

The IWG proposed trans fat guidelines were found to have met by over 90% of the foods advertised, whereas 60 to 70% met the guidelines for sodium and saturated fat. Added sugar guidelines were obeyed by merely 20%; and less than two percent met all the IWG guidelines. The researchers have published the findings in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.