Analysis of Role of Television in Childhood Obesity Prevention

In the International Journal of Obesity the article "Role of Television in Childhood Obesity Prevention," was written by Caroli, claiming that television is hindering children from physical activities, which is the cause of the rapid upward slope of childhood obesity. Caroli provides reasons that are supported by previous scientific studies that give facts such as: time spent watching television and being obese are positively correlated, the exposure of unhealthy stimulations in terms of food intake when watching television. Her purpose of presenting data conducted in several studies is to affirm and inform that television hinderers from physical activity and can lead to obesity at a young age and health risks. Caroli's argument is directed towards expecting parents and parents seeing the cause and effect of a lot of television on their child. Even though that television could be used a beneficial tool if used in the correct way, children need physical activity to remain healthy as they grow strong and old because data showed correlates to an upward slope of television and childhood obesity and exposure of unhealthy commercials will influence unhealthy eating.

The layout for this journal article was well structured and every claim had a research study to support and give credibility to why it's important to store good habits early in children and how to change the current lifestyle to prevent health risk later in life. This informative argument uses facts, reasons, and builds credibility by referring to credentials that establish her facts on correlation between television and childhood obesity.

Caroli's first point in her theisis statement was "time spent watching television and being obese are positively correlated" is presented by two studies: the first study showed the cause and effect amongst

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the different age groups are cross-sectional. The second study dealing with correlation to tv and obesity was conducted by Gortmaker who found a statistic association between the number of hours spent in front of television during childhood was 4.6 times greater for subjects who watched tv for more than 5 hours a day compared to those who watched for 0-1 hours. Between the two studies conducted on time spent watching tv and obesity, the first study lacked a lot of logical proof and could 've been stronger if data and statistics were included, which would have made the information from study more sound and trusted like the second study. Overall the claim uses an abundance of logos by stating facts and the explanations about the two researches, but in order to make her point more sound and effective she could have included data and more statistical documentation from the beginning of study until the end with numbers and graphs showing how it correlated against (x) time spend watching tv and (y) the rate at which they gained weight. The argument of sign was presented to be the more tv watched the more obese one would become. Ethos was presented in the form of argument authority by Caroli describing and providing the credentials of the factual evidence that were used to support her claims.

Caroli's second point in her argument "the exposure of unhealthy stimulations in terms of food intake when watching television "is supported dominantly by logos all throughout this section in her article. She states that food shown during commercials don't meet the criteria of healthy nutrition which influences kids to say "I want that". Another form of influence by commercials on tv is through characters (human/cartoons) eating snacks and not complete meals, and drinking soft drinks and/or alcohol, instead of water. This particular statement through me off, because the overall article is to be on the role of Childhood obesity prevention why would a child be affected by seeing alcohol present in commercial or television series? This would be considered a red herring, misleading evidence that pulls audience away from real argument, because it has nothing to do with the argument. Logos is very strong in the paper and somewhat strong in this section of the argument that the fallacy didn't hinder it too much, but the author needs to be careful of throwing facts that don't pertain