Researchers from the International Association for the Study of Obesity warned that firms are using the internet to push foods with high salt, sugar and fat content directly to children, with parents often ignorant of what is going on.
They say a new report shows young people are increasingly being targeted through new media, making responsible food choices even harder for parents.
Flinders University nutritionist Kaye Mehta says junk food advertising to children used to be largely confined to television, but the focus is shifting.
"There has been an explosion of marketing techniques through non-broadcast media," she said.
"Children are being exposed to very increasingly clever, sophisticated marketing techniques for products that are largely unhealthy, so what chance do they have to make healthy choices?"
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Advertisements for junk food may be cluttering many of the Web sites most popular with children, a new study suggests.
When researchers examined 28 of the Web sites most frequented by children, they found that the majority of food products advertised there met experts' criteria for "foods to avoid."
Ads for sugar-laden cereals, candy, soda or fast food populated a majority of the Web sites, which included sites one would not readily associate with food, like those run by Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network, among others, noted Dr. Lori Dorfman, director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group in California and one of the researchers on the study.
In contrast, of the 77 advertised products across all the Web sites, only five were foods that children should be encouraged to consume, the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.
