Junk Food Advertising: Strong Protection Children In America

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.

Children spend nearly $30 billion of their own money on junk food. Marion Nestle stated on https://www.nejm.org that, “The food companies make misleading claims and they spend massive amounts sponsoring scientist and major health organizations to influence their research and guidelines.” Yet, marketing’s recent tactics have gone way further to persuade children. Along with television advertisements, they have shifted to product placements in toys, games, educational materials, songs, movies, and much more. The IOM noted that “…by two years of age most children can recognize products in supermarkets and ask for them by name.” More children are becoming obese and diabetic before they’re old enough to make decisions about these

Advertisements are everywhere. They are a major part of modern day society. Whether it be a television commercial, an internet banner, or a billboard, advertisements influence people of all ages, but they affect a certain age group much more than others. Children ranging from toddlers to teenagers are exposed to thousands upon thousands of advertisements each year. Some of these advertisements are damaging to children, while others are a positive influence. Advertisements can either be used as a tool or a weapon. Food advertisements and manipulation strategies are both positive and negative, and how companies use them decides whether or not marketing to children is ethical.

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.

Dawes reveals that the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood united with two parents made known their intent to sue the Kellogg’s corporation as well as Viacom, owner of Nickelodeon. The CCFC and their partnered parents declared that the two afore mentioned companies were deceitfully marketing nutritionally unsound foods to children under the age of eight. The litigants were seeking to end junk food advertisements aimed at children younger than eight-years-old during highly popular children’s programming on Nickelodeon’s station, while also seeking to terminate Kellogg’s advertising campaigns which targeted young children with the company’s fat and sugar laden products. Interestingly, the author points out that this distressing issue is not new, as identical concerns, of adverse health effects incited through advertising high-fat and high-sugar food products to children, were voiced at an FTC hearing at the end of the

Fed Up presents a possible solution to help the obesity epidemic - Placing parameters on how big food companies market to children. Cartoon characters, bright colors, and toys are all ways to get children to buy a company's products. Kids consume these unhealthy products and are addicted at too young of an age to even know the foods are bad for them. Small groups of doctors and activists try to change this by regulating big food companies, but the results are always the

American businesses set their ads to target young kids and grasp their attention in order to try to sell a certain product. These businesses are more concerned with selling their product than the health and well-being of America's children.

This article talks about the advertising and obesity debate. Advertising industry has reacted strongly as well as challenged the idea of government restricting or banning advertisements showed during children’s programs. One of the main arguments of the advertising industry is that what children consume is a matter for the parents to decide. This article examines multiple arguments, and perspectives in regards to how advertising affects consumers.

Food advertisements are being very creative with their commercials on television and billboards all around the US. With no doubt they are catching people’s attention, mainly children and adolescents. All the beautiful bright colors a commercial has and the price they are offering makes a good deal to a family. Once they see that they automatically have to get it, because of course it is way cheaper than a salad and other healthier foods. Marketers do this, with the intention of getting consumers hands on their product. Although they spend tons of dollars for a commercial, they will still do it because one way or another they are getting profit from it. All those commercials that have been in trend and that will be in trend, are affecting children

Searching and applying on a computer for a first job opens doors to a whole new world of possibilities. The process is painful, but eventually a McDonald’s hired me with the help from a friend. After a shift, I returned home exhausted from the constant flow of orders. So, I often wondered why many families decided to eat dinner at McDonald’s, even though the food lacks proper nutrition. My curiosity led to my research question, how does fast food advertisements affect children? In order to write the investigative report, I thoroughly researched my question using my school’s databases. I discovered that many researchers studied the effects of fast food and advertisements on children because fast food restaurants target children. My research

For the past thirty years, marketing companies and other commercial entities have used lawsuits to win more expansive First Amendment protections for commercial speech including the regulation of advertising to children. Advancements in digital technology have allowed marketers to find more direct and personalized gateways to reach young audiences through advertising, side-stepping the authority of adults and taking advantage of children’s vulnerability. While food corporations might argue that it is ultimately the targeted audience who assesses a product and therefore no regulation should be permitted, the government needs to regulate how far commercial speech can stretch under the First Amendment in order to protect the health and safety

Our position statement demonstrates the need to limit the exposure of unhealthy food and beverage advertisements, which in turn will address the issue of childhood obesity. Roberts et al. (2012) suggested that regulations be closely monitored and more tightly enforced to protect children (as cited in Galbraith-Emami, & Lobstein, 2013, p. 969). However, due to the lack of enforceability or penalties of marketing tactics, it is unlikely that regulations are having an effect in reducing children’s exposure to such advertisements (Galbraith-Emami, & Lobstein, 2013, p. 972). With this evidence, the need for regulations and implementation of healthy public policy for advertisements, would lead to significant health promotion strategy and lead to positive outcomes for children, in particularly in Alberta.

This article highlights the many issues of marketing to children, especially in the fast food department. Specifically, this article talks about the issue of obesity and McDonalds, which is one of the world’s largest fast food chains. As of late, cities like San Francisco is voting to ban selling toys with fast food for children, especially when it exceeds levels of salt, fat, calories, and sugar.

In today’s society, the food and beverage industry is faced with an ongoing ethical dilemma because they are far more concerned with making money than providing a good, safe, and healthy product for consumers. The biggest victims in this unethical marketing scheme are children. Children are the least informed and most influenced of all potential consumers (5). Although children usually don’t directly purchase these products themselves, their desires strongly influence their parent’s decision on what to buy and what the child will eat. Most products geared towards children are unhealthy, processed foods that are high in sugars and low in nutritional content (6). This has led to a rise in childhood

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