Fast Food And Obesity

Fast food advertisements can be found around the world, on newspapers, television, and even online. Children, teenagers, and parents have seen marketing focused on fast food. While adults may think little about such blatant advertising tactics that are solely designed to attract new customers, how are kids affected? People across the United States worry about the ever increasing obesity rates amongst children in recent years. A common explanation is the spike in popularity of fast food. Most kids and teenagers have eaten fast food at least once in their lifetime. But why has fast food gotten increasingly popular recently? Fast food has always been known to be very unhealthy, but kids still consume it anyway. The culprit: fast food advertising. In modern times, the majority of kids living in the United States have access to the internet or television, where they are easy targets for advertising. To prevent the nation from growing up obese, fast food companies should end all ad campaigns targeted towards children and focus advertising strictly on adults. These advertisements cause kids to consume fast food more often, to eat an unhealthy diet, and to grow up in a culture dependent on fast food.

More research is needed to examine whether food advertising is a causal factor for increased risk of obesity. Experimental and epidemiologic research, including longitudinal designs, is needed to study the effect of food advertising on children's food choices, eating behaviors and body weight. Studies need to include the various marketing channels used to reach youth, such as television, schools, and the Internet, as well as different age periods, such as early childhood, middle childhood, and

Some children’s families do not have the finances to purchase healthy foods, so they buy what they can afford which is fast food and junk. Markets have lowered their prices for the unhealthy food making it easier for consumers to buy and harder to resist when it fits in the budget. Also, television has become a big part of the youth’s extra-curricular activities. Children don’t spend most of their time outside playing anymore, now they watch TV for more than seven hours. A recent literature review by Kaiser Family Foundation highlighted a number of studies that suggested that advertising influenced dietary and other food choices in children (M. Dehghan, N. Akhtar-Danesh and A. Merchant). While watching TV for hours on end, they will see advertising for fast food restaurants and junk food. Unhealthy foods are advertised on TV to target children and adolescents. TV viewing is a contributing factor to childhood obesity because it may take away from the time children spend in physical activities. Watching TV leads to increase calorie intake through snacking and eating meals in front of the TV. Plus influence children to make unhealthy food choices through exposure to food advertisements that are unhealthy.

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.

“The rate of obesity in children has nearly tripled in the last quarter century”(American Psychological Association). Children receive the most exposure to advertisements due to the amount of television they watch and online games they play. At an early age, children shape their first opinions on what they like and dislike, so just by watching advertisements they can develop product preferences for unhealthy foods that lead to poor eating habits. “In very young children, research has found that for every one-hour increase in television viewing per day, there are higher intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages, fast food, red and processed meat, and overall calories”(American Psychological Association). Advertisements targeted at children use colorful images and characters to attract them to their products and add labels like “multi grain,” “no sugar added,” and “all natural” to influence parents to buy their products. But most of these food claims are unregulated and open to abuse. “Approximately 20 percent of our youth are now overweight with obesity rates in preschool age children increasing at alarming speed”(American Psychological Association). Naturally, being obese as children puts them at risk of being obese as adults, which can lead to health problems such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some forms of cancer. In addition, advertising causes

The results suggest that exposure to commercials that are targeted for kids and teens – 60% of which the Obesity Health Alliance recently reported advertised unhealthy food and drinks – Are driving younger viewers to crave and consume more junk

In order to live a healthy lifestyle and reach 142 children must eat healthier. 16% of children and teenagers are overweight, which means they have a body mass index of 25 or more. Food advertisements have served as an effective tool of persuasion to sway children toward unhealthy foods that have contributed to the current epidemic attitudes

In fact, the article Down to Earth: All Vegetarian Organic & Natural confirms that, “The average child sees more than 10,000 food ads on TV each year, most for high-caloric, high-fat, and high-sugar meals.” In continuation, a group of health professionals formed an experiment on television ads, targeting children. They, “undertook a collaboration among 13 research groups in Australia, Asia, Western Europe, and North and South America. Across all sampled countries, children were exposed to high volumes of television advertising for unhealthy foods, featuring child-oriented persuasive techniques” (“Television Food Advertising”). Children all over the world are affected with obesity, they see advertisements every day in their local communities. Schools also contribute to obesity, the article Down to Earth: All Vegetarian Organic & Natural, additionally claims, “Not only does the fast food industry spend billions per year on marketing, but they have

Hospitalizations of children for obesity-related illnesses are on the rise, “the annual direct cost of childhood obesity is reaching nearly $14.3 billion”(Mikailova). It is very worrying that children are developing such bad health conditions due to the rising rates of obesity. Despite the growing rates of obesity related hospitalizations advertisements for unhealthy foods continue to be aired during children’s programming.

Researchers of the epidemic of obesity are inclined to emphasise environmental aspects, including the convenience of high-calorie appetising junk foods in conjunction with the influence of television programming, video games, computers and tablets that discourage exercise. Theoretically, there are two consequences to regular television viewing, which are a decrease in physical movement and an increase in consumption of junk food as a result of junk food advertisement exposure. While there is a continuing dispute regarding how food commercials impact the occurrence of obesity amongst children and adolescents and, despite lacking evidence of a direct correlation between childhood obesity and junk food advertising, numerous countries, including Norway, Finland and Sweden, have prevented fast-food companies

Obesity rate continue to rapidly increase among children. One possible contributor to the Obesity epidemic is unhealthy food advertisements that are directly targeted to children. In the article “The impact of Food Branding on Children's Eating Behavior and Obesity” children each day are:

According to the American Heart Association, 1 in about 3 American kids and teens are overweight or obese. The amount of overweight children has more than tripled from 1971 to 2011. With a good reason, childhood obesity is now the number one health concern among parents in the United States, topping drug abuse and smoking. “Marketing to kids gets more savvy with technology”, says that this generation is expected to live a life expectancy less than their parents. This is because knowledgeable marketers, such as McDonalds, Burger King, and Arby's are advertising their products to a vast majority of children worldwide.Marketers advertising fast food encourage kids to eat fast food. However, too much fast food can cause obesity, heart disease,

“A recent examination of the nutritional content of food ads during children’s programming found that 72.5% were for high-calorie, low-nutrient products; 26.6% were for high-fat or high-sugar products: and just 0.9% were for low-calorie, nutrient-rich products” (Powell, Schermbeck). Even web sites promote unhealthy food products which create a bad perception for a healthy lifestyle for kids. Gaming web sites particularly, market poor-nutrient foods targeted for children. Research has shown that food advertising companies have strategized an effective selling plan towards children. Companies rely on features that appeal to children: happy, colorful, vibrant, exciting and fun. There are very little food product advertisements promoting fruits and vegetables. These influences shape children’s nutritional knowledge, eating practices and weight status. All in all television exposure is linked to diet misconceptions. The misconceptions have a domino effect on children’s food preference and choices which then poorly effects children’s unhealthy weight status.

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