How Overeating Causes Obesity: Marketing Food to Children and Obesity

Someone who has more that 95 % of the body mass index can be termed as obese. This definition is used for both adults and children, and the percentage of kids who meet these criteria is high as 20 % in recent years. When you consider the health implications of childhood obesity that include diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, it is easy to see why doctors are so worried over the rise in these numbers. Obesity is caused because of over consumption of calories and not able to burn them. Over consumption is caused by over eating and calories are not burnt because of lack of exercise. Obesity needs to be controlled now otherwise our younger generations would face lots of problems in their future life. So prevention is always better than cure.

How does Marketing Food to Children Cause Obesity?

Nowadays if you see the televisions, all advertisements are related to junk food advertisements. So children see all these advertisements and get addicted to these junk foods. So when they go out with their parents, they demand the junk foods, which is high on fat content and very low on nutrition content. Most of these foods fall far behind in the nutrition race, and are instead packed with sugar and fat. When a child is bombarded with this advertising while watching their favorite programs, Mom is at a distinct shortcoming when it comes time to do the grocery shopping. Kids will ask and plead for the junk food that are little more than a bowl of sugar, and snacks that are high in fat and low in nutrition.

Child obesity from fast food has different evidences to show that children who eat fast food meals for two to three times a week consume higher calorie intakes, more fat and saturated fat, excess sugar consumption, more sweet beverages, higher total carbohydrates intake and less consumption of vegetables, fiber and milk. Changing poor habits during childhood is easier than changing these habits as adults. Obese children will need to spend some time to get back to their normal weight. If these eating habits are changed in childhood, it is easy to change.

It is also obvious in the sales figures that most of the food sales to children went for candy, sweet and salty snacks and sodas. The money that goes into the sales of these products is huge, which explains the big marketing budgets that go into the advertising of these products as well. So children are getting addicted to candies, pizza, burgers, and sodas through advertisements. So a serious concern should be taken in order to prevent children from getting addicted to these junk foods.

What can be done?

Parents can keep a watch on their children and allow them to watch TV according to a schedule. So if they watch limited television, they would see fewer advertisements of junk foods.

Summary: This will help them not to get addicted to such kind of food, which is high on fat content and low on nutrition content. When you go to the store, leave your kids at home whenever possible, and encourage them to eat healthy choices rather than the high fat, low nutrition food that are so often advertised. With proper guidance, marketing food that causes obesity in children will have much less influence on your children.

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CHILD OBESITY