Childhood Obesity In Children

As fast food Industries expand throughout the United States, Americans have chosen to eat unhealthy food saturated in fat. Obesity has become an epidemic in the united states in the 70s impacting the common American family because of the lack of the healthier resources. Fast food company use marketing strategies to target the younger generation by building fast food companies in small towns which destroys any opportunities for the younger generation to eat local unprocessed foods. Obesity is the current issue America is facing and it appears to be growing each day. Many blame fast food who have attracted the public with advertisements containing foods, saturated with chemicals and fats. Propaganda and commercials are the most common advertisements to target the younger

In the United States, a crisis is breaking out known as the Obesity epidemic. For the first time in history, it is possible for the children of this generation to have a lower life expectancy than their parents. Millions of Americans are exposed to ads that are luring them into eating the cheap, fast food of billion dollar companies such as McDonald’s. Obesity has established itself as the fastest growing disease in the nation and continues to make an impact on the general population. The issue of Obesity is directly related to todays technology through television, cell phones, video games and all of sorts of new gadgets.

Having an unhealthy eating diet such as fast food, chips, soda, and baked goods all can have an impact on a child’s weight gain. Chains of fast food restaurants such Mcdonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Wendy’s, target young people. For example, there is a young child watching television and a commercial comes on, these commercials corrupt the child’s mind and portrays that it is healthy to it eat when it's not. In addition, parents will buy their kids this junk food because it is cheaper than buying

Parental neglect of offering healthy food for their kids led to compound the crisis. Recently, the consumption of fast food has dramatically risen in the U.S. The huge relevance of fast food restaurants, such as McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Taco Bell and others, could be a contributor in changing the Americans style of food, and increasing their intake of these unhealthy foods. According to a research conducted about fast food consumption in the U SS, 22% of parents said that their kids consume fast food meals at least once a week, which might easily drive to obesity. As known, the main aim of fast food companies is raising their profitability, and therefore, their plan is to sell food as much as they could despite their knowledge that it is unhealthy. So, they focused on attracting kids to buy from them by enticing advertisements. They know how to draw kids’ attention, especially when they describe the taste of their meals and show their toys that come with them. There is no doubt that TV programs and advertisements have a strong impact on children. Many studies have confirmed that watching TV for a long time during a day is able to influence kids in their attitudes and habits. The problem of eating fast food is that it has a lack of fiber and dairy, contains a high density of energy, and has big amounts of protein, fat and sugar, which makes it the unhealthy

This disorder has grown tremendously, multiply in children and even quadrupled in teenagers over the past few decades. Obesity is a condition were a person is significate over-weight for his or her height and weight, too much body fat can lead to long term healthy problem such as physical, mentally and emotionally if treatment is not applied. Obesity is mostly effecting children ages 2- 19 years of age, about 1/3 of children under the age of 11 years old are obese. In the years of 2016 about 41 million preschool children were considered obeses. Childhood obesity is obtained through food addiction, which one consumes a large portion at one time. Obesity can occur for varies of reason such as lack of physical activities, Genetics, certain medications

The television advertising targeted at children is harmful. The Journal of the American Medical Association has said “children between ages of two and seventeen watch an annual average of 15,000 to 18,000 hours of television, compared with 12,000 hours spent per year in school” (Beacon Press, 2000). This indicates that children watch television for too many hours, so the advertising companies target children to increase the number of people, watching their programs. We can see from the above that the fast food industry spends a lot of money to just advertise to children increase their profit. Also, based on the research of the Food Advertising to Children and Teen Scores, show that the average preschooler between the ages 2 to 5 see almost three fast food advertisements every day. The children between the ages 6 to 11 see three and a half advertisements for each day, and teenagers see almost five advertisements for every day (Yale University’s Rudd Center, 2009). In other words, average children ages 2 to 11 see fast food advertisements approximately 3 times for each day. If children watch advertisements from television every day, within one year children will have watched fast food advertisements approximately 2,000 times a year. This is a very serious amount that should cause concern with our young children.

About a third of children in the U.S. are considered overweight or obese, and researchers believe television advertising is a significant contributing factor (4). Exposure to television advertising is basically universal and the ads present foods as desirable and attractive. Children have been shown to be far more receptive to television advertising messages than classroom lessons (3). It leaves a harder lasting impression on them because the food products are presented in a cool, fun way that attracts children. Most of the time, children would pick foods that they may not even like, simply because they think it’s the cool thing to eat and once a kid gets his mind set on what they want, it is very hard to steer them away from wanting it. Television ads for foods geared toward children are usually fun, and bright with animations and lots of cool characters that the children can relate to. This directly influences the child’s food preference and unfortunately most of these ads are for processed, unhealthy food products like cereals, snacks, fast food, and soft drinks. In the U.S., there are few restrictions on food ads, but that's not the case in the U.K., where junk food can't be marketed on children's television (4).

Fast food advertisement agencies take advantage of the ignorance of children to scam them into wanting unhealthy meals. Each year, the fast food industry spends over $3 million of advertising targeted towards children. Half of television advertisement is used during children’s shows and with cartoons. Out of all the factors

Up until the late 1990s, seeing an obese child was extremely abnormal because children’s main form of entertainment was playing outside. The rate of childhood obesity drastically increased due to the fact that children’s main form of entertainment has shifted from outdoor activities, to vast outlets of easily accessible technology. Children are also being served a variety of unhealthy meals from fast food restaurants, such as McDonald’s or Taco Bell. Unfortunately, most parents do not know the underlying truth about what they are feeding their children and often choose the cheapest route for feeding their families. Research indicates that the corpulence of today’s youth is becoming severely problematic, and drastic steps are being taken to solve the obesity concern in adolescents.

s children is that more is better: super-sized servings of French fries and soda, gigantic buckets of movie popcorn (with free refills) and king- sized candy bars (Dillon, 2009, p. 16). According to Harris (2012), one-third of the kids in the United States are overweight, yet fast food chains continue to target them and provide them with unhealthy food without telling them what they are actually eating. In all the studies that I read all the researchers used BMI (body mass index) to the probability of advertisements raising kid’s body fat there is a correlation suggesting that lower cost of fast food make it more accessible to young kids. Although not all the studies agreed on how much responsibility ads hold they all agreed that part of the

Obesity is the condition of being grossly overweight. For the past decade child obesity has been stable 17%, affection 12.7 million children of the ages 2-19 years old. The beginning of an unhealthy life is first learned at home. When children begin to start learning about different food and portion size they look to their portion size they look to their parents. Starting children off on fast food at a young age to teach them, that is okay for example to have fries all the time instead of vegetables. With parents not taking responsibility for not teaching their children healthy eating habits school meal programs. The research Mary Eberstadt of (“Hoover Institution, a public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics,

As stated by the world of kids, “Currently, an estimated 1 billion people – that’s a little over 1 in 7 – are overweight, and at least 300 million of them are classified as clinically obese.” Even though the commercials for fast food are increasing, fast food advertisements do not contribute to obesity in children because children live a sedentary lifestyle and parents fail to provide a balanced diet. In a recent study Fast Food commercials seem to have risen in the past decade (childhood).

According to WebMD, one third of children in the United States are overweight or obese. The number of obese children continues to rise. Over the past 30 years, the rate of childhood obesity has doubled. Due to being obese there are many health factors that obesity will affect such as, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, early heart disease, diabetes. Many co-morbid conditions like metabolic, cardiovascular, orthopedic, neurological, hepatic, pulmonary, and renal disorders are also seen in association with childhood obesity. There are ways to prevent obesity among children.

A recent study revealed that 89% of food targeted to children consists of high levels of sugar, fat, and sodium (Harris et al., 2009). These exposures create lifelong eating behaviors and health choices for children (Harris & Graff, 2011). These commercials also have an effect on the increased rate of childhood obesity (Harris & Graff, 2011). The obesity rate is grown rapidly in the Unites States of America; approximately 25 to 40 percent of teenagers are overweight (Rees, 2004). Obesity can cause adolescents to have low self-esteem, be conscious about their body image, and can also result in teasing and bullying by peers (American Psychological Association,

The commercials feature animated characters selling fast food kid meals. Children relate with the cartoon characters and want to eat the foods that are being promoted. Children receive the message that fast food is good for them, and do not understand that eating too much fast food can be unhealthy for them. Unfortunately the message from this type of advertising is geared toward the child thinking I need to have the fast food. This is a bad message to leave in children?s minds, because it can also cause problems with their health. The obesity rate in young children has risen drastically over the last twenty years. Health reports have attributed this to the continuing increase in the amount of fast food children are consuming. Television commercials for fast food are on every channel, and the number of channels has risen over the last twenty years. Children who watch television are exposed to a non-stop borage of commercials. This continual exposure promotes a cycle of the child always wanting to go to the fast food restaurants. Parents also are affected by the commercials. Their children want to eat fast food, and the fast food is very convenient for busy families. It is much easier to go through a drive-thru and order the food, then to cook the meal at home. This can be a harmful pattern for the family to establish. Convenience over a more healthy home cooked meal adds to the childhood obesity