Parents want tougher rules to control televised food advertising to children, but have doubts about the government's will to introduce or enforce them, according to a Flinders University study.

The study found that parents from varied socio-economic backgrounds are concerned by the nature and the effects of food advertising screened during peak viewing time for children.

The study used focus groups to canvass in depth the opinions of 32 parents (24 mothers and eight fathers) of primary school children, and was conducted by Masters student Ms Joyce Ip, now working as a graduate dietitian in Hong Kong. The project was supervised by lecturers Ms Kaye Mehta and Associate Professor John Coveney of the Nutrition and Dietetics Unit in the Department of Public Health.

The study made a number of key findings, including that parents consider food advertising significantly influences their children's food choices, and that the influence was detrimental in pushing children towards poor food choices

The study found that the dreaded "pester power" is alive and well - virtually all of the parents interviewed expressed strong concern about advertisements that used toy offers or premiums to reinforce the appeal of products to children.

"It's a real thing - one parent said 'I'm pestered 24/7'," Ms Mehta said.

Ms Mehta said the qualitative data from the sessions backed findings from other broader, statistical surveys about parental concerns.

When participants were shown the existing legislative regulations controlling food advertising contained in the Children's Television Standards, Ms Mehta said that parents were "bemused, perplexed and horrified."

"They felt the regulations were being breached quite regularly," she said.

Based on a selection of screened advertisements as well as their own recall, many parents expressed the opinion that the regulations were worthless.

"They got quite heated in discussing the regulations, and concluded that they wanted to see the regulations more tightly enforced," Ms Mehta said.

The parents also wanted new regulations to reduce the overall total of advertising.

"They spoke about the accumulative effect of repetitive advertising, and talked in detail about how in one program the same advertisement can be replayed over and over again," Ms Mehta.

Parents also expressed a desire to see the promotion of healthy foods on television, featuring advertisements of sufficient quality and appeal to compete with commercial advertising.

Ms Mehta said that the parents' initial reaction to the suggestion of a total ban on food advertising to children was equivocal.

"But on exploration, their reasoning was that they didn't have the confidence that a government could pull it off, because of the large amount of money involved in advertising," she said.

"It wasn't that they were philosophically opposed to a ban - they just didn't think it could be made to happen."

Ms Mehta said that although the study showed no significant differences among the participants in basic attitudes, parents from lower socio-economic groups tended to feel that responsibility in dealing with the issue was theirs alone, while parents of higher socio-economic background saw the responsibility as one to be shared by government, industry and parents.

Ms Mehta said that the regulations controlling food advertising to children have been put up for public review by the Australian Communications and Media Authority during 2007.

"Parents are obviously concerned about the inadequacy of the regulations, so it's an important time for anyone who is concerned to make their voices heard."

The Flinders study will be published in the March issue of the Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics. Ms Mehta has recently conducted another study on pester power, this time with children themselves, and is currently compiling the results.