Marketing to kids adds to obesity issue

In the past few months Canada advertising agencies joined the growing group of countries that have taken responsibility for the obesity epidemic in their countries. Canada's largest food industries have agreed to restrict advertisements during any television program geared toward 12 year olds or younger. The prevention of these ads will not stop the growing obesity epidemic of this century but it will help to decrease the large amount of affects it has on young children and their health choices.

Junk food and fast food marketers believe they are not responsible for epidemic because everyone makes their own decision whether to watch and or pay attention to their ads. They are completely wrong.

Although it is the viewers' own decision, they have been influenced since a young age when they are vulnerable and naive to the fact that the product that looks so delicious can become so harmful as they grow older. At first marketers didn't believe that young kids had an influence on the way that adults spent their money until the early 1980s, "However, starting in the 1980s with the movie E.T.: Extra-Terrestrial, which featured a Reese's Pieces-loving alien, advertisers and marketers discovered that if certain kinds of candy or food are placed in popular kids' movies, then kids will be more likely to ask their parents for them" (O'Connor). This was the start of all major food marketing directed toward young children.

The new marketing restrictions in Canada should be a great example to other countries especially the United States. We all want to make a change in these nations' unhealthy lifestyles and we have found a big instigator of the problem but no one stops it. The longer the food marketing business aims toward the youth of this nation, the shorter our nations' lives will be.

Danielle Kern

Arlington Heights