The Correlation Between Television Advertising 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.

Television and advertising companies have been linked to childhood obesity. Advertisers spend on average two million dollars in the United States each year marketing food to children. The

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.

Ultimately, parents and advertising play a huge part in childhood obesity. Parents need to teach kids at a young age, the importance of exercising and eating right and how it will lead to a healthier lifestyle. If parents are parenting, by encouraging their children that the commercials aren’t always right and they

“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

Association, kids often do make food choices based on what they see on television. Doctors who study kids have noticed that food advertised is very powerful” (39). In order to prove that idea, the author adds that children and teens who watch more than two hours of television daily are more likely to be overweight than those who do not. Due to the many fast food restaurants and advertisements available to Americans, the realization that their food is unhealthy does not occur. The United States is aware of the consequences that come along with obesity, yet rarely ever are there advertisements promoting a healthy lifestyle. It is uncommon that an overweight person is shown eating a restaurant’s food in their commercial. It will give off the wrong

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

Additionally, the connection found between childhood obesity and the marketing of the food industry in the American Psychological Association’s article The Impact of Food Advertising on Childhood Obesity is intriguing because it has been found that the advertisement of fast food may affect childhood obesity. The marketing of food industries has an impact on childhood obesity because fast food

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).

Influential advertisements that are constantly shown to children while they watch TV, motivate them to make poor food choices. Children start to believe that unhealthy and non­nutritious foods often referred to as “junk food” are what they should consume. Young children are not aware of what consists a healthy diet and they over­consume the unhealthy junk foods. The over consumption of non­nutritious foods is leading obesity in children. Obesity has serious consequences for the children as they get older. Obese children begin developing many different types of chorionic disease later on. As a recent health article stated that,“obesity in children is responsible for type two diabetes” (Harvey 2013). The government must review and approve plans to limit or control the advertisement of unhealthy foods on children’s TV channels because, advertisements are influencing children to over consume unhealthy food and leading to the child obesity epidemic.

In the last decade the rate of obesity has risen drastically, many believe this is due to the increase in fast food advertisements infiltrated worldwide to children of a young age. Obesity in preschool children has risen, with approximately 20% of children today overweight. In today’s society children spend a substantial amount of time on computers, on their phones, and watching television. While there are indeed some healthy food advertisements, Rose Gregory in the article “Fantasy in Food

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