Health IQ: Cartoons swaying kids to eat junk, breast cancer mortality rates drop

Should junk food mascots like Tony the Tiger retire?

It’s not so grrrrrreeat after all.

Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Paw Patrol squad are helping promote unhealthy eating habits in Canadian children, and some experts are calling for a full-out ban on these popular characters.

According to a new study, funded by Heart & Stroke and published Tuesday by researchers from the University of Ottawa, there is a link between licensed cartoon characters (like Spiderman) and spokes characters (like Lucky the Leprechaun from Lucky Charms) in enticing children to eat junk food.

The researchers showed food ads to more than 1,300 Canadian kids aged nine to 12 during January and February 2023 and measured their intentions to eat, buy or pester their parents for it.

When it came to the cartoons with the greatest influence, spokes characters stole the spotlight.

Children exposed to ads featuring spokes characters, like Tony the Tiger and Snap Crackle and Pop, showed a significantly higher average total impact compared to those exposed to licensed characters, the study found.

And this is leaving some experts worried, as child obesity rates in Canada continue to climb.

“Tony the Tiger … he’s not selling carrots. Tony the Tiger is selling basically candy in the guise of breakfast cereal,” said Dr. Tom Warshawski, a B.C. pediatrician and chair of the Childhood Obesity Foundation.

Read more here on why Warshawski and the researchers involved in the study are recommending Canada implement a ban on these characters.

Women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer can expect to become long-term survivors of the disease, according to a recent study.

The study, published Tuesday by the BMJ, found the average risk of dying from breast cancer in the five years after an early-stage diagnosis has fallen to five per cent from 14 per cent since the 1990s.

The study included 512,447 women diagnosed with early breast cancer (meaning it had not spread outside the breast) in England from 1993 to 2015.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women in Canada and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Canadian women, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.

“It is a trend that we’ve been seeing for years and years. So it’s lovely to see some really solid data coming out of the U.K.,” said Kimberly Carson, CEO of Breast Cancer Canada. “Canada and the U.K. are very similar in demographics and so it’s great news for Canada because it’s confirmatory data that we’ve been seeing for a number of years.”

Read more about the study and the reasons why breast cancer rates have been declining over the years.

Pfizer on June 12 warned that a drug used to treat syphilis in pregnant patients and bacterial infections in children could run out by the end of June.

The supply shortage of penicillin, called Bicillin, is the result of a “complex combination of factors” including significant increases in demand due to an increase in syphilis infection rates, the pharmaceutical company stated in a letter sent to customers in the United States.

Pfizer is the only manufacturer of Bicillin in Canada. The drug is the most effective antibiotic in the treatment of all syphilis in pregnant patients. It also can treat common childhood infections, like strep, ear infections or pneumonia.

Supply of the pediatric version of the drug is expected to be exhausted by the end of this quarter, the company said. However, Pfizer told Reuters in an email the pediatric version of the antibiotic is not widely used, as there are other alternatives such as amoxicillin.

The supply for kids will dwindle because Pfizer instead plans to prioritize the medication for adults, as Bicillin is very effective in treating syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease. The drugmaker said while there is a shortage of adult dosages, it does not expect them to run out.

The shortage is predicted to start recovering in the second and third quarters of 2024, Pfizer said.

Cases of congenital syphilis, when the infection passes to babies during pregnancy, have spiked over the past few years in Canada, according to Health Canada.

Syphilis in pregnancy is the second-leading cause of stillbirth worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.