Children in Food Advertisement

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“COOOOOKIE CRISP!” My seven-year old self repeats after Chip the Dog convinced yet another parent that cookies for breakfast are in fact a wonderful idea. Sugar, cereal, and cute little cookies were my favorite things in the world at the time, making this sugar infested cereal a treasure that I needed immediately. Just as the parents acting in the commercial, my parents also said “no cookies for breakfast allowed”. But unlike the Cookie Crisp commercial, it did not end with a dog named Chip barging in, shoving a spoonful of miniature milk filled chocolate chip cookies into my parent’s mouths, magically changing their nutrition driven minds. I begged and pleaded for a short time and then decided to put my slightly manipulative mind to work. I knew that if I couldn’t get what I wanted from Mommy and Daddy, I would go straight to the loving source of my grandparents. All I had to do was snap my tiny fingers and every loudly advertised snack I could imagine would be at my disposal. They took their jobs as grandparents seriously by spoiling me terribly and allowing the “normal” rules to be broken, “our little secret”. Air Heads, Twizzlers, popcorn, and chips, all things wonderful were given to me. This adjusted my mind to think that it was okay to have such a starch filled, trans fatty diet thus lessening my desire for anything healthy.
After years of this lifestyle, I became the chunky girl and did not understand why. It seemed that everyone else was eating this way, or so the television deceivingly made me believe. As I Grew older, I began to realize that a balanced diet does matter and that the food pyramid is not merely a chart that schools are required to teach. Health suddenly became important. I wanted to look in the mirror w...

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