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Right Under Our Noses:
How There Is Much To Be Done About Childhood Obesity
In February of 2009, Michelle Obama became the face of Americas fight against
obesity called Lets Move! Among some of the efforts made by the First Lady and her
newly appointed “Obesity Task Force” were to double the amount of fruits and
vegetables in school lunches within the next decade, increase the amount of playgrounds
around the country, making food labels easier to read, and educating parents to teach their
children how to eat better. Though these are all steps forward in reversing the current
trend of one in three children being obese, we are still a long way from making a true
difference in the obesity epidemic.
Obesity is an issue that has yet to be fully addressed. With over 500 “junk food”
commercials during children’s shows a week, and a lack of formal nutritional and fitness
education, kids both do not know how to be healthy, and are being brainwashed into
living more sedentary lifestyles. This is significant because if we continue to only make
small steps towards a cure, then we can say that we tried, but obesity rates in children
will still rise slowly, killing the future of America. To help with this issue, we must
lower the amount of fatty food commercials compared to health promotional
commercials, and start teaching our children about nutrition in the classroom starting in
kindergarten.
Before I begin to explain the effects junk food ads have on children, let me first
review how both television viewing has grown, and how advertisements play such a huge
roll in the decisions we make. First off, since 1970, television has become an integral
part in children’s lives. According to the Academy of American Pediatrics, children now
watch an average of four hours of television a day. This results in an increase of junk
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food advertisements that are viewed by children. This is important because
advertisements have a huge affect on how we formulate our decisions to buy certain
products.
Television advertisements, especially food advertisements, play a significant role
in affecting our decisions when it comes to what food we buy. An advertisement is
meant to make us believe that we need to have a certain product. Whether that be by
convincing us that it may be “cool” to eat a certain food, or to make it seem that eating
that food is as fun as dancing at a club, or riding a rollercoaster. Advertisements utilize
methods that play on our imaginations, like a skillful pianist eloquently preforming a
beautiful piece of music. By seeing how much enjoyment characters are getting out of
certain foods on advertisements, this makes consumers believe that it is important to have
specific foods. Because of this, advertisements are dangerous as they convince us to
purchase certain products, even if in reality they are not truly good for us.
As children watch several hours of television a day, they are exposed to a large
amount of junk food commercials. The quantity of the commercials essentially brain
washes children to want to have the specific product advertised. The American Academy
of Pediatrics researched what commercials are in fact on television and found, “A newer
study of 1638 hours of TV and nearly 9000 food ads found that young people see an
average of 12 to 21 food ads per day, for a total of 4400 to 7600 ads per year, yet they see
fewer than 165 ads that promote fitness or good nutrition” (AAP). The ratio of junk food
to healthy commercials is staggering in favor of unhealthy foods. Though this is an
improvement from several years ago, the difference is still so large that it is as if nothing
has been done. Further, if there is barely any change in the advertisements shown on
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television, then it is the kids that will feel the affects.
The major issue with advertisements is that even though not as many “junk food”
commercials are being shown on television, there is still enough to make children believe
they really want a certain junk food. The Nation Bureau of Economic Research states,
“We find a positive and significant relationship between advertising and children’s body
mass index” (NBER, 20). That is, children are getting bigger when they watch more
advertisements. As “junk food” commercials find their way into every 30-second
window in between our children’s favorite television shows, it becomes enshrined in our
brains to want what the commercial is selling.
As children continue to watch more television, they will be inspired to eat more
unhealthy foods as more and more junk food commercials are aired. The NBER did a
study on the correlation between childhood obesity and television. They note, “Studies
indicate that the more children watch television, the more they specifically request the
brand-name products that are advertised on television when at the grocery store” (NBER,
7). That is, the more television children watch, the more they will want to buy specific
products they see on advertisements. With junk food commercials flashing on our
children’s screen at an alarmingly rapid pace, they become convinced that they need to
buy the junk food they see on television. This means that children will want to have
more junk food as they see commercials encouraging purchase of these obesity threats.
Commercials encourage children to want highly processed food by utilizing
characters that exemplify the characteristics of those on beloved children’s television
shows. Characters like “Tony the Tiger” (frosted flakes cereal) present a positive attitude
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and seem to be more enjoyable because they have eaten the product. According to the
American Academy of Pediatrics, “The use of licensed characters to promote foods to
children may be particularly effective because children lack the ability to understand the
persuasive intent behind advertisements” (AAP). This means that children only see the
fun that the commercial characters are having by eating the specific product, but they do
not understand what advertisers are really doing. Children do not understand that
characters like Tony the Tiger are scheming behind their bright white smiles. The true
reason that these characters are so happy is not because of the product but because they
are successfully tricking children into begging their parents for these highly processed
foods. Therefore, these characters are the greatest weapons that advertisers have in
succumbing kids into wanting their product. Further, because children are not educated
on proper nutrition, they cannot identify the problems within commercials promoting
highly processed foods.
There is not enough being done about educating students on how to live healthy
lifestyles. Children may understand that sitting in front of the TV and eating Doritos may
not be the best lifestyle choice, but what about things that aren’t so obvious. How many
children do you think know the right portion sizes for meats and grains? Or how about
how many servings of vegetables a day they should be getting. The majority of kids will
have no idea how to answer these questions. While the Lets Move! Program is making
nutrition easier to understand, if kids do not learn necessary facts about nutrition in
school then they will struggle to ever understand how to have a balanced diet.
Though the Lets Move! Initiative is making positive steps forward; they seem
flawed in their reasoning. For example, President and First Lady Obama are pledging to
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make sure food companies make their food labels less transparent. In her report White
House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President the First Lady notes,
“FDA is currently investigating options for a standard, front-of package label” (Obama,
25). What this means is that the government is indeed making food labels easier to
follow by making it easier to see exactly what is in your foods such as how many grams
of saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat are in your food.
Though First Lady Obama is right in taking this step as it makes understanding what is in
your food easier, the problem is, our children are not educated enough to understand how
to even read a nutrition label. Because children do not have nutrition class in school it is
difficult for them to read a nutrition label and understanding that eating food with 5
grams of fat may be better than they think, or the difference between soluble and
insoluble fibers. So while Michelle Obama is correct to work towards making labels
easier to understand, without proper schooling for children on nutritional benefits, the
majority of children will not know what they are eating.
As children are naïve to what they are eating, it becomes very easy for them to eat
excess calories. Therefore, the older these children get, the bigger they will be.
According to the American Council on Exercise, people who do not have healthy diets
and do not work out regularly (which is the majority of children in the United States),
gain about two to three pounds of fat a year. Combine that with no exercise and a loss of
about half a pound of muscle a year and we have created quite an epidemic. With that
being said, there are a few steps that we can take that will significantly decrease obesity
in children.
The first thing we must do is to either regulate or fully eliminate the junk food
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commercials during children’s television shows. In 2009, congress wrote up a tentative
list of what needs to be changed by the advertisement companies, and of course the
advertisers felt it to be too strict. EJ Schultz of Advertising Age magazine writes, “The
nutrition rules for what can be marketed to children are too strict, industry leaders say.
Mr. Jaffe said that as written, the rules would prohibit the advertising of "substantially all
fruit juices" and ‘most peanut butter,’ for example” (Schultz). Because most peanut
butters and fruit juices do not meet the health standards of the proposition, they would not
allowed to be advertised on television. The change congress is attempting to make would
handcuff the advertisement companies, making it difficult for them to continue creating
children’s advertising that are enticing enough to make these children beg for specific
products.
To counter the complaints of the advertisement companies, these changes may
hinder the checks of ad agencies, but the changes will promote healthier nutrition. If kids
do not see as many commercials luring them towards processed foods, then they are less
likely to want such foods. If we are able to eliminate, or at least regulate the amount of
commercials played during children’s television shows, then we could see up to a 15%
drop in obesity within the next decade (NBER 14). Imagine now if those commercials
were substituted for positive health and fitness promotions. The basis would still be the
same for the commercial with a relatable children’s cartoon or something of that nature
on the commercial. The difference is, instead of promoting sugary juices or fatty peanut
butters, they would promote, jumping rope, eating broccoli, playing basketball, or
drinking eight cups of water a day. These commercials could change the way children of
a young age feel about nutrition and health. That is, if children were watching these
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types of commercials, then they would be more likely to enjoy being healthy.
Finally, children need to be educated on the subject of nutrition. Starting from as
early as kindergarten, we need to implement aspects of good nutrition into the
curriculum. This could be as easy as singing songs about “yummy” fruits and vegetables
in kindergarten before or after lunchtime. As children get older we can implement
aspects of nutrition into science and math classes. By implementing these small aspects
into the classroom, children will be able to learn about how to live a healthy lifestyle,
which is of the utmost importance.
Nutrition should be implemented over other classes in the school curriculum
because by learning to eat better, we can learn how to be healthier. Though
understanding math, English, science, etc is most important, there should be aspects of
nutrition in the classroom, because it teaches students how to make choices that are good
for them. This is a lesson that could be put into the context of all walks of life. That is, if
kids learn to make the right choices with food, they will become used to making the right
choices and will be in the practice of doing so everyday. As nutrition is placed into a
classroom setting, it will directly lead to a healthier lifestyle for children as they take
what they have learned and apply it to their lives in the future.
So yes we have made strides since obesity became such a problem in the United
States. However, as long as advertisements promote unhealthy food, and children are not
properly educated on how to eat there will always be a few simple and yet significant
occurrences that need to happen for obesity to be diminished in the United States. If we
simply give children a chance to learn and make their own decisions about nutrition,
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instead of keeping them in the dark about it by not educating them, and then basically
choosing junk food for them with all of the advertisements, then they will be able to
improve their health.
These changes will indeed have positive effects on our children but what we need
to analyze further is the implications that these changes will have on government
spending. By promoting nutrition in the classroom, what will be cut from school
budgets? More importantly, how do we convince government to regulate advertisement
agencies? Whatever the answers may be we must hurry because the longer we wait, the
closer our children come to being such a weight on our shoulders that we will not be able
to lift them off.
Bibliography
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Television and Its Influence on Childhood Obesity." NBER. National Bureau of
Economic Research, Dec. 2005. Web. 05 May 2012.
<http://www.nber.org/papers/w11879>.
2. Hoeger, Sharon A. "Ch 5 Weight Management." Fitness & Wellness. By Werner
W.K. Hoeger. 11th ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. 150+. Print.
3. Obama, Michelle, and Taskforce. "The Challenge We Face." Letsmove.gov. Lets
Move Initiative, Oct. 2009. Web. 5 May 2012.
<http://www.letsmove.gov/sites/letsmove.gov/files/TFCO_Challenge_We_Face.p
df>.
4. Policy Statement. "Children, Adolescents, Obesity, and the Media." Pediatrics.
American Academy of Pediatrics, 27 June 2011. Web. 5 May 2012.
5. Roberto, Christina A., Jenny Baik, Jennifer L. Harris, and Kelly D. Brownell.
"Influence of Licensed Characters on Children's Taste and Snack Preferences."
Pediatrics. American Academy of Pediatrics, 21 June 2010. Web. 05 May 2012.
<http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/1/88.full>.
6. Schultz, E.J. "Global Push Behind New Efforts to Curb Childhood Obesity."
Http://adage.com/article/global-news/joins-fight-marketing-unhealthful-foodkids/149234/. AdAgeGlobal, 7 Mar. 2011. Web. 5 May 2012. <adage.com>.