Negative Effects Of Fast Food Chains Marketing To Children

Fast food chains marketing to children For years fast food chains has tried to market to children trying to lure them in to buying their product. They use different types of marketing strategies in order to get kids to want their product. Parents don’t realize the negative effects of their kids eating fast food during their devilment stages. These companies are making millions of dollars marketing to children, and are not concerned about the well being of the children. Fast food chains should not be marketing to children, because it has a negative effect on children’s health, kids are not old enough to fully understand how bad fast food is for them, and marketing to children is part of the reason the childhood obesity rates are so high. Fast

When kids are young they do not the difference between right and wrong, and they are bound to make mistakes. Kids make irrational decisions not being able to think about the consequences that will happen. Fast food chains market to children, because they know it isn’t hard to get them to buy their products. Kids at an early age do not care about calories and what they put in to their bodies. Fast food chains can manipulate children to get them to come to the restaurants, and to bring their parents. If put a fee toy with the purchase of a meal it is almost impossible for a kid to say no because kids do not know any better. Kids do not realize the long term effects of eating too much fast food. A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Arizona State University did a study on how much fast food chains actually direct market to children. The researched showed that “More than 20 percent of all the restaurants and 31 percent of the chain restaurants used child-directed marketing -- a category that includes advertisements with cartoon characters, television personalities, movie stars, and sports figures, as well as displays with kids ' meal toys, three-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, and play areas” (Charlotte 2 ). That is a high number of fast food chains marketing to children, and the number keeps growing. Fast food chains should not have the power to be able to market to kids as much as they do. Fast food chains also target specifically low income families, because they are more likely to buy fast food. The reason for this is because of how low the cost of fast food, and how convenient it is for families. The same team of researchers from the University of Illinois and Arizona State University found that “fast food restaurants in middle- and low-income areas tended to direct their ads toward children more often than those in high-income neighborhoods,