Bill Cronin
DeVry University
The Marketing of Food to Children
The majority of children today tend to crave more sugary foods, fattier foods and other various unhealthy foods. These cravings are the direct result of marketing these types of foods to children through television commercials with the use of catchy music, cartoons, bright colors, TV actors, and other fictional characters; for example, McDonalds with Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar. They also usually offer toys or prizes with the food to entice children even more like putting a prize in the cereal box or offering a toy with their meal. A majority of these foods that do this are extremely unhealthy for everyone and are known to cause obesity and oral health problems. Therefore, it is imperative if we want to stop the increasing rate of obesity and prevent the early development of oral health problems, then we need to abolish the marketing of unhealthy food to children and reduce children’s ability to obtain these foods when not under a parent’s supervision.
The first and most critical reason to stop the targeting of unhealthy food to children is the impact it has had on the growing rate of obesity and the large majority of kids being considered overweight or obese. In our country the numbers of children who are considered overweight or obese grow every year at an alarming rate. This in hand is cultivating a generation of adults that will be unhealthy and overweight as well. This in turn will be passed down to their children making a legacy of unhealthy habits. However, we must examine the first reason the unhealthy habits develop at such a young age. The answer is quite simple, television. Like any advancement in technology there are always their draw backs. One of the leading drawbacks is advertising. Advertising in short is a quick way to taunt us into spending our hard-earned money on most things we don 't need. The fast food industry has taken this medium
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