Healthy and unhealthy food in Italian television ads for adults and children

In the last decades several changes in lifestyles occurred leading, among other things, to a new “food culture” among European families. Such changes include a growth in families’ income, total work hours and, most importantly, a higher number of working mothers. These factors resulted in the diffusion of pre-cooked and ready meals, snacks and fast-food in general. The availability of easily accessible and ready-to-eat meals gave children as consumers greater control on their food consumption, as the traditional parental mediation (i.e., choosing, buying and consequently cooking food for their children) progressively lost importance.