Buffington1 Korena Buffington Professor Gritsch Sociology 305 6 October 2019 Calories for Sale In “Calories for Sale: Food Marketing to Children in the Twenty – First Century” by Susan Linn and Courtney L. Novosat (2008), Linn and Novosat argue that childhood obesity is on the rise because of marketing of high – calorie, nutritionally dense food. The reason why the authors are alarmed about the marketing of this food is because 30% of American children are overweight. These kids have diseases like type two diabetes, hypertension, and asthma all preventable if these children weren’t overweight. In 1983 corporations where spending 100 million on advertising to children today corporations spend 10 to 15 billion dollars on advertising to children through their television screen. The rise in money spent on marketing to children is an indicator on the food choices that children make and then have their parents buy for them. As well as the children along with teens that spend $200 billion on candy, snack foods, soft drinks, fast food, and cereal because these companies spend 10 billion to make them think they need this nutrient dense food. A 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine found that for younger and older children television advertising effected their food and drink choices. Research done by Stanford University found that when they offered 3-5-year old’s chicken nuggets, fries, and milk half of the food was branded with the McDonalds logo and the other half was unbranded. The children said that the McDonalds branded food was better, but all the food came from McDonalds it just shows how well these companies are branded that even these school children recognize them. Buffington2 The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission both where supposed to regulate advertising and marketing to children but since these companies had so much more money and power it was hard to police them. The government took away a lot of the FTC’s protecting power because the huge companies put pressure on the government sighting that the FTC was limiting them. The only thing the FTC could regulate was “deceptive” marketing strategy of these companies but they where still able to use other means of selling their product to kids through cartoons and commercials. In order to keep the FTC out of these company’s business’s Children’s Advertising Review Unit was created and funded by advertising companies so they could have self – regulating guidelines. In order for companies to keep selling to children they need to know how they think so many companies hire child psychologists to exploit children’s nativity and lack of maturity to make good food/drink choices. One company employing these psychologists was the company Gepetto Group they used psychology and anthropology to understand what makes young consumers tick. The Gepetto Company worked for Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and Frito Lay which all rely on the young consumer to generate business and all these companies produce the highest calorie dense foods. These companies also use product placement, contest, promotions, and cross branded and of course school marketing a place your child spends eight hours a day at. These marketing companies used characters from kids shows and movies to get children to want their products. In 2007 the film Shrek the Third had “licensing agreements” with McDonalds and Kellogg’s so they used Shrek’s likeness to sell products from happy meals to fruit snacks. Brand licensing is a huge way they market these unhealthy snacks to kids if children see their favorite character on a Buffington3 box of sugary cereal their going to want the cereal because of the character placement not necessarily the product. The companies started feeling the pressure from concerned parents, so they started putting kids’ characters on sliced apples and carrots to try and distract from the unhealthy snacks they were pushing with the same kids’ characters. But the message was still wrong you want kids to eat healthy foods because their good for them not because Sponge Bob is on the packaging. The companies have also found their way into schools which is a huge problem because kids will have sugary drinks and highly processed snacks at school and then go home and have snacks and dinner which adds up to lots of empty calories. They have put vending machines selling sugary drinks in 94% of high schools and 84% in middle schools which is terrible for these kid’s health. “In the Unites States, the escalation of marketing to children and the rise of childhood obesity have occurred while the CARU – the advertising industry’s set appointed watchdog - has served as the primary self-regulatory agency responsible for monitoring child - directed advertising (Linn, Novosat, 148).” These companies need to be held accountable for the rise of childhood obesity and the role they play in it. This research article pertains to my research topic because it deals with obesity and the harmful effects it has on today’s society. I enjoyed the research the authors did because it sheds light on how powerful these companies are and how they manipulate children and their parents to buy their unhealthy food products that make society fatter and these companies richer. I wouldn’t change the way the research was done it was informative and gave great insight to how these companies use marketing to trick children and parents and how they prey consumers.