MUMBAI: Over the years Nickelodeon US has positioned itself as being a channel that not only provides entertaining content that has taken it to the top but one that also pushes for a healthier lifestyle for kids.
Now the channel has done a study which has found that American kids today have great leeway in deciding when and what they will eat throughout the day – and that only half of them report eating breakfast everyday.
To address the research findings, Nickelodeon will unveil a series of new Public Sservice Announcements (PSAs) later this month, which focus on the importance of starting the day by eating a balanced breakfast. The first spot entitled The Day the Earth Skipped Breakfast from Nick’s How to be Well PSA series, addresses how eating breakfast provides energy and fuels muscles; but skipping breakfast leads to bad temperaments and sluggish behavior.
The second spot It’s Breakfast Time animated by Klasky Csupo Rugrats features animated utensils rhyming and singing about breakfast foods as needed sources of energy for the start of the day. The various PSAs will run throughout the day and additional spots will continue to rollout over the next few months.
Another finding is that only 39 per cent of kids consistently eat three meals per day. There is a disconnect between kids and parents when it comes to eating behavior. Kids report having greater freedom over their eating behaviors than their parents report. Kids who skip meals have significantly higher body mass indexes (BMI) than kids who eat breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday.
The Kids, Food and Eating Behaviors Study and the breakfast PSAs are two components of Nickelodeon’s multi-faceted approach to address kids’ health and wellness issues. The network, currently in its third year of its award-winning pro-social initiative Let’s Just Playrecently announced the second annual Worldwide Day of Play where the network will go dark on 1 October 2005 to engage kids in healthy and fun activities.
The first-ever Worldwide Day of Play held in 2004, resulted in participation from more than 1,800 grassroots organizations and 250,000 kids. Let's Just Playemploys PSAs featuring Denzel Washington, Hillary Duff, Clay Aiken, and others, community events, partnerships and grassroots efforts to reinforce the pure value of play, and to challenge community infrastructures to support re-investment in recreational resources for kids.
