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Advertising effects on childhood obesity essay
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Since obesity levels and other health concerns are increasingly becoming a widespread issue, setting limitations on targeting unhealthy foods to children has started to take effect in many countries. For example, although Canada has seen an alarming increase in childhood obesity over the years, the 1980 Quebec’s law that banned fast food marketing in both print and electronic media to children under 13 years old caused expenditures to decrease by 13 percent, resulting in Quebec having the lowest childhood obesity rate in the country. After implementing laws similar to Quebec’s, some cities in the countries Chile, France, Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom have started seeing dramatic decreases in childhood obesity rates …show more content…
Despite the U.S. making efforts to promote healthy foods, it needs to start banning and condemning the advertisements of unhealthy ones, especially to children who will otherwise gain detrimental eating habits that can impact their lifestyles in the future.
However, food industries are working their hardest to defend their actions concerning their marketing strategies, one common argument being that their tactics are not ethically concerning at all but are purely business-related and not forced upon consumers. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of various books relating to nutrition and food, observes the extensive marketing strategies of many supermarkets in her essay “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate.” Nestle discerns,
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Undoubtedly, significant issues ranging from the globalization of poverty, access to healthcare, lack of political freedoms, and increase of terrorism and wars are more urgent and pressing, especially since these issues affect people more directly than the slow consequences of unhealthy foods. However, the presence of other ethical issues does not make the ones of the food industries’ exploitation of marketing strategies to innocent children inconsequential. If food industries continue to manipulate the minds of young children in order to solely benefit their businesses, children will grow with these unhealthy eating habits, promoting an obesogenic environment in addition to an extraneous number of health-related illnesses. Since food industries’ advertising strategies to children prove to be unvirtuous, people of all countries need to make more of an effort to limit and ban the companies’ actions, recognizing that their lack of decency, respectability, and morality should not reflect on the lives of the future generations to
There should be limit’s that stop’s food companies from promoting themselves as appealing when in reality their food products are a hazard to our bodies. As Barboza states in his article “There is a need to set specific standards on what is marketed to children…” we are in agreement that, what ever kids see on T.V. or being marketed, they want it! As a child I remember that I wanted many things I saw on T.V. like Carl's Jr, Lucky Charms, Mcdonald's, Gushers, ect… When eating these food products, as you get older it affects your health. A good
Obesity in the United States, which the media has labeled a national crisis, has also been connected to poverty rates. Big fast food industry’s target poor communities, and spend millions of dollars each year to create advertising that appeals to these specific areas. These industry’s also target naïve children when advertising because they know that eating habits developed in childhood are usually carried into adulthood. Children who are exposed to television advertisements for unhealthy food and who are not educated well enough on good nutrition will grow up and feed their families the same unhealthy foods they ate as kids. A big way fast food giants are able to make certain young people have access to unhealthy food is by strategically placing franchises in close proximity to schools. They will often place three times as many outlets within walking distance of schools than in areas where there are no schools nearby. The way fast food advertising is targeted towards children is very alarming considering how important good nutrition is for young people and how a child’s eating habits can affect their growth and
Obesity is a growing concern in Canada and due to the increased time spent in one’s place of employment, there is an augmented importance placed on healthy living in the workplace. In 2004, approximately 6.8 million Canadian adults between the ages of 20 and 64 were overweight, and an additional 4.5 million were obese as recorded by the Canadian Policy Research Networks (Pierre, N., Pollack, N., & Fafard, P. 2007), further emphasizing the need to reduce obesity rates and to improve overall health. This demographic represents primarily the working population, which is the target population in respect to promoting active living in the workplace. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the “impact of the obesity epidemic on non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer threatens to overwhelm health systems; the need for prevention and control is clear” (ECOSOC/UNESCWA/WHO, 2009)
Crouse, Janice Shaw. "The Fast-Food Industry Intentionally Markets Unhealthy Food to Children." Fast Food. Ed. Tracy Brown Collins. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2009. At Issue. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.
of Philip Morris, said “People could point to these things and say, ‘They’ve got too much sugar, they’ve got too much salt […] well, that’s what the consumer wants, and we’re not putting a gun to their head to eat it. That’s what they want.” (Moss 267) However, consumers are being unconsciously forced to fund food industries that produce junk food. Companies devote much of their time and effort into manipulating us to purchase their products. For instance, Kraft’s first Lunchables campaign aimed for an audience of mothers who had far too much to do to make time to put together their own lunch for their kids. Then, they steered their advertisements to target an even more vulnerable pool of people; kids. This reeled in even more consumers because it allowed kids to be in control of what they wanted to eat, as Bob Eckert, the C.E.O. of Kraft in 1999, said, “Lunchables aren’t about lunch. It’s about kids being able to put together what they want to eat, anytime, anywhere” (Moss 268). While parents are innocently purchasing Lunchables to save time or to satisfy the wishes of their children, companies are formulating more deceiving marketing plans, further studying the psychology of customers, and conducting an excessive quantity of charts and graphs to produce a new and addictive
Advertising for fast food disproportionately targets children, obesity rates are going up, there are labs dedicated to creating food flavors, and the cleanliness of the restaurants where the food itself is served is questionable. The negative impacts the fast food industry has on the world have their roots in biology. The taste of the food is engineered to appeal to our taste buds, and after the access to fast food increased, our bodies began to crave it. Clearly, the fast food industry must undergo significant change to ensure its impact on the world is a positive one. It’s imperative that this change must be made within the near future, should the mass consumption of unsanitary food be prevented, and ensure that cheap food is somewhat
Perinatal and early childhood factors for overweight and obesity in young Canadian children The increase in rate of obesity in young Canadian children has being a great concern. Efforts to identify the early factors has led to the study of potential early - life determinants, and their interrelationships with obesity among young Canadians. Four Preventive factors of early life determinants of childhood obesity in young Canadian children ages 6 to 11 that could guide early intervention practices were identified are as: Maternal smoking during pregnancy, birth weight, age and not being white, socio economic inequalities, genetic maternal factors, infant growth and feeding, childhood behaviors and environmental factors. Recent findings have
A dramatic rise in obesity rates has taken place over the last 30 years in Canada. Not only is it affecting adults but also children as well. According to Statistics Canada, around 13 percent of children from the ages of 5 to 17 are obese and this states that the number of obese children has tripled since 1980. It shows that the pace of prevalence still continues to increase significantly. The World Health Organization and the Canadian Obesity Network take obesity as a chronic disease because of the deadly impacts.
Childhood obesity is a serious problem among American children. Some doctors are even calling childhood obesity an epidemic because of the large percentage of children being diagnosed each year as either overweight or obese. “According to DASH sixteen to thirty-three percent of American children each year is being told they are obese.” (Childhood Obesity) There is only a small percentage, approximately one percent, of those children who are obese due to physical or health related issues; although, a condition that is this serious, like obesity, could have been prevented. With close monitoring and choosing a healthier lifestyle there would be no reason to have such a high obesity rate in the United States (Caryn). Unfortunately, for these children that are now considered to be obese, they could possibly be facing some serious health conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancers. All of these diseases have been linked to obesity through research. These children never asked for this to happen to them; however, it has happened, and now they will either live their entire life being obese, or they will be forced to reverse what has already been done (Childhood Obesity).
has been found that 10% of the factors of childhood obesity is due to diets being very low in fruits and vegetables (AIHW 2016c, 2017). The large intake of foods that provide no nutritional value, namely fast food and sugary drinks encourage children’s diets to exceed requirements leading to weight gain (NHMRC, 2013a). Physical activity also helps to keep children fit and healthy however with the introduction of so much technology, kids are preferring to sit on their phones during lunch then go kick the soccer ball. Kids are also interacting with other kids at school and their mindset is being influenced by these settings. When other kids are overweight, it slowly becomes the norm for a child’s weight to be more than what it should be.
In the article, “75 Percent of Americans Say They Eat Healthy – Despite Evidence to The Contrary” by Allison Aubrey and Maria Godoy, they mention that industries spend billions of dollars marketing junk food and sugary drinks and that celebrity endorsements have also been shown to play a role in influencing bad eating habits. Even though there advertising for healthy eating and food with the proper nutrition there just isn’t enough effort to overcome the junk food industries. 2. Review a TV commercial or advertisement in a magazine or online that focuses on food that is geared towards children. In what ways do the ads entice children to
False Marketing Marketing and advertising to children are still a controversy in the field of ethical acceptability (Clow & Baack, 2015). In fact, reported by Brown (2015), in Australia, McDonald’s was ranked worst by parents for marketing unhealthy food to their children. Similarly, McDonald’s was forced to change their advertising because it focused too much on advertising their Happy Meal Box, which contains high amount of fat, sugar and salt, to children by offering toys accompanied with the meal (O’Reilly, 2015). It is clearly that advertising to children is unethical since Lascu (2013) et al. mentioned that children are not have awareness of persuasive purpose of food marketing, they are entertained by those advertisement and toys, cartoon characters are incentives to influence children’s food preference and
middle of paper ... ... hild and development of good nutritional practices. We will, where appropriate, capitalise on the potential of advertising to influence behaviour by developing advertising that supports positive and beneficial social behaviour including sensible consumption, friendship, kindness, justice, honesty, generosity and respect of others, and in so doing expose children to the benefits of constructive advertising approaches. Prior to release, all advertisements and promotions to children will be reviewed at an early stage for the appropriateness of the activity and then checked against this code before being signed off by business unit general managers. In addition, there will be a periodic review of business unit activity by regional and global management to ensure that interpretation of the code is aligned locally, regionally and globally.
Nestle, discloses information on public policy, how the food industry is one of the largest and most powerful industries, making profits of $1.3 trillion dollars on an annual basis. The article covered information on school food as well as strategies for change. Change can only come with cooperation and unity. In the meantime, children can be introduced to healthy foods and taught about the consequences of junk food (processed foods). Nestle, M. (2002).
As a little girl I loved watching television shows on Saturday mornings. I’d get upset when a show would proceed to commercial. That is until I watched the shiny new toy being played with by the girl my age and of course the cool new one that came into the happy meal, then I’d forget. After seeing the appealing commercial I’d run to my mom and try to slickly mention it. “You know McDonalds has a new Monster’s Inc. toy in their happy meal. Isn’t that great? “Now I realize that back then I was targeted by big companies to beg my parents for things that I didn’t need or that wasn’t good for me in order to make money. Advertising today is affecting the health of today’s children because they eat the unhealthy foods advertised to them on: television, the internet, and even at school. Therefore, an impassioned discussion of possible solutions has been brewing.