Do Advertisements Cause Children And Teens To Make Unhealthy Food Choices?

Advertising companies that produce commercials of food are taking an effect of teens healths. Anna Lappe discussed this situation in a video called, Real Food Media Project - Mythbusters Ep.2, she says, “... By the time Ida graduates from middle school one in three of her classmates will either have diabetes or on their way to getting it…” The children of this world are being affected by the foods that they are eating, these children are eating harmful products that can affect their health later on in their life. Another statement Anna Lappe discusses in her video is, “... only 16%...” of these kids are eating fruits and vegetables.

Commercials through television and radio aimed towards children are ethical because it helps build healthy ideals. Through commercials, children can see that doing certain things are good for you! They can see that it is what they should do. “Advertising and marketing techniques could encourage children to eat

One of the main effects marketing take effects on youth is they're health. According to the documentary The Myth of Choice: How Junk Food Marketers Target Our Kids. 1 in 3 kids each day eat fast food, causing cancer, obesity, and diabetes type 2. This shows that if advertisers don't care about kids health or they're oblivious to the affects. And it's most likely not going to change. Also from the documentary, The Myth of Choice: How Junk Food Marketers Target Our Kids. It states “engineered to target parts of your brain that want fat and sugar”. Junk food companies hire scientists to like it said, target the parts of the brain that want your body to have that type of stuff. So is basically addicts you to the food so you'll always want to have

Children are targeted in these ads they try to draw their attention by making the ads fun, and by using cool phrases. Moss proposes and “He explained how he would deploy strategic storytelling in the ad campaign for his snack, using a key phrase that had been developed with much calculations:” Eat’ Em Like Junk Food’ (494).This proves that ads plays a role in promoting food that are unhealthy and is putting children 's health at risk for obesity. To sum it up, children are exposed to high amount of unhealthy food advertisements which affects young children health and food choices. Therefore, the government needs to intervene and stopping the advertisement of unhealthy eating and start advertising healthier foods.

Advertising can lead to teens and kids making poor choices. 200 Billion dollars are pulled from the average teenage pocket every year from items that are advertised. For example 1 and every 3 people get some kind of diabetes before the age of 20 due to unhealthy eating. Almost every fast food restaurant has some kind of advertisement to lure people. Over 90% of fast food is unhealthy and can cause things such as cancer or diabetes. That's why I think Advertising can lead to kids and teens making poor choices.

Professional triathlete, Sally Edwards said “If we will not settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn’t settle for junk food” (Don’t ask). Suggesting that we consume so much processes food without thinking twice, but wouldn’t in other aspects of life. In today’s society, these harmful foods are easily accessible to the general public. One might find it easier to purchase a pre-made meal rather than cook at home. Advertisers are well known of that preference and use it to their benefit. With the movement of healthy eating many companies are falling behind to provide that clean eating many of their customers are asking for. Instead they try to deceive customers with their ads seeming to be healthy. In the February issue of

Recently in health class we watched the movie Super-Size Me. This movie was about a guy named Morgan Sparks that went on a thirty day trial where he ate only McDonalds for all three meals every day. With this experiment he gained about twenty five pounds, that is almost one pound per day. Besides his major weight gain he went from eleven percent to eighteen percent of body fat. He also had irreversible changes to his body. In the next couple paragraphs I will be telling you about advertising unhealthy foods and how it effects most people but targets younger kids.

With playgrounds, Ronald McDonald the clown, and a friendly environment, it’s inevitable that fast food is a huge influence to the obesity epidemic. The Journal of Law and Economics says how even advertising places such as McDonalds influences kids on television even if they don’t know it: by treating advertising as a complementary good, consumers may simply derive more utility from consuming a more advertised good. The problem with America is the accessibility and convenience of fast food. There is now an option to supersize what is already more than a portion size. This heavily impacts obesity: your body's metabolism slowly stops to work as fast, you feel sick, and most of all losing the weight is more challenging than gaining it.

According to Katz, children have seen about 50 percent less food advertising in the last six years than before that time—yet obesity rates continue to climb.(Ericka Andersen 14) There’s been bans on advertisements on foods that are labeled as unhealthy by government regulations, and the companies feel as though they are being directly targeted since they have the right to “free speech.” Rather than the issue being the food that is consumed it's claimed that obesity is actually due to the decline in physical activity of the people. Former FDA [Food and Drug Administration] Commissioner Dr. Mark McClellan attributes the obesity problem to "physical inactivity"—not caloric intake. In fact, McClellan noted that children's calorie intake has remained about the same for the last 20 years.(Ericka Andersen

The food being advertised is extremely unhealthy and contributes to the obesity epidemic that is sweeping the nation.

Americans have always had the mentality that bigger is better. Bigger cars, bigger houses, and bigger salaries are just a few ways that Americans supersize their lives. But, there is one other thing that has been growing in American households: their weight. Portion sizes are out of control, video games always beat a playground, and everything is motorized. This is the way that American children are growing up, and out. But in a society that is so obsessed with looking good and thus, thin, how are these children getting so large? Advertisements. The news has been attacking advertisements aimed at children, and rightfully so, they are showing unhealthy lifestyles and eating habits in a socially acceptable way. Children watch cartoons.

There are some specific and real problems that advertising can cause upon children (William A. Ramsey). Fast-food restaurant advertising it’s influencing our children to be obese. Childhood obesity around the world is causing worries, especially detrimental as its effect carries on into parenthood. The ratio of children 's who are overweight has approximately tripled in the same period, reaching fourteen percent (Center for disease control

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).

Food advertisements, if focused at the right people and in the right places, are a complete success. These features, some of which are commercials, seduce society into buying food that we necessarily do not need. Many advertisement companies, especially those about food, are directed to children because they know that if you grab the kids you have their parents. While brands are using fun cartoons like “Trix Rabbit” and “Toucan Sam” (Green, 2007, p. 49) supermarkets are taking these items and placing them right in front of the children, at their level, advertising the “Fun foods” (Elliot, 2008, p. 259-273). They do this so the kids will use their, “pester power” (Scholsser, n.d., p. 2) to get what they want. A series of studies have been performed on children and television advertisements. An article states, “These studies have generally linked children's television viewing to negative health effects” (Korr, 2008, p. 451). Amongst these negative effects is a higher level of childhood obesity (p. 451). Similarly, in another study performed by a group of researchers, kids were asked to explain the television commercials that they remembered the best. The answers given were then compared with their diets. Interestingly, the items those children remembered best, chips, sweets, and sodas were a huge part of what they ate (Hitching & Moynihan, 1998, p. 511-517). However, some authors argue that television producer’s, even though their

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