Advertising Fast Food to Children Under The Age of 12

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How much do the fast food companies spend for advertising to children in the United States? In 2009, “The Fast food companies spent over $ 4.2 billion in the fast food industry alone to market on television, the internet, social media sites, etc” (Brownell, 2009). This amount of money demonstrated that advertising to children is big business for companies, but it affects children directly, who are innocent of future generations. The purpose of this essay is to convince legislators to consider banning the advertising of fast food to children under the age of 12 in children’s programming. First, I will briefly describe the definition of fast food and the negative effects of advertising fast food to children under the age of 12. They are considered harmful to children, encouraging long term unhealthy diets for children, which lead children to obesity. I will give examples of some countries that already ban fast food advertising during children’s programming and state some simple solutions to solve the problems.

The definition of fast food is convenient food which is prepared and served quickly at a fast food restaurant. It is easily nearby anywhere and customers can take home with drive-thru pick up in order to save time. Fast food is also inexpensive. Also, most of fast food is considered unhealthy food because it is high in calories, sodium, cholesterol, saturated fat and sugar. These unhealthy foods can lead to weight gain and many health problems such as: high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes. Namely, the United States have twelve big chain fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, KFC, etc.

The advertising of fast food effects children under the age of 12 is ...

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...ents. The other one is that schools need to provide more hours to teach children about the negative effect of fast food. Why they are bad for their health and teach more about the healthy diets as a campaign to consume healthy food.

In conclusion, advertising fast food to children under the age of 12 should be banned because it is considered harmful to children, encouraging long term unhealthy diets that lead children to obesity. So we need to find some solution. In other words, parents have an important role to give the right nutrition and healthy diets to their children, to be more aware of the television their children are watching, and to limit the time for younger children. Finally, families should do some physical activities with the children. Then as a result, we can reduce the amount of obesity in children and have more healthy children in our society.

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