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The effects of weight loss advertising
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I have chosen to write my research paper on Option 2; which covers how industry and advertising affect our health behaviors. The reason this topic stood out to me the most is because it’s actually a huge problem in today’s society. America has one of the highest obesity rates in the world because most food companies care more about profiting than our health, our health classes in grade school don’t stress the importance of eating habits enough, and because of the pricing of bad foods compared to healthy foods. The industry and advertising of food companies has a huge impact on everyone and it’s not necessarily a good one. Let’s begin with the fact that there are advertisements at about every street corner, television channel, radio station, and social media website that we come across. Unfortunately, a majority of them promote fast food, their low prices, and target their advertising to children. This has not lead to substantial improvement in the marketing of healthier food because statistics show that about three out of every four food related commercials advertised to children fall into the unhealthy groupings that contribute to the obesity
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All of these risks and diseases come after becoming addicted to eating poor choices, and these poor food choices come from the advertisements and marketing of food companies. Although there are some commercials that promote the healthy choices and habits, the majority of them are promoting poor
“The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” by Michael Moss addresses many issues with big companies and their thought process. Although Moss neglects to show the things that companies do right or do because the consumer desires it. He doesn’t bring to light the different options that big companies put out that are healthier for the consumer. Moss does a good job of pointing out what he believes to be the short coming of big companies towards their consumers. Are big food companies meeting our needs or creating them for us? Should they have to set limits between meeting our genuine needs and making a profit for themselves? Moss’s point of view of the conscious effort to make food inexpensive and addictive is an accurate portrayal.
In the article, Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor (Ackley 361). Since the early 90s is when Commercialism has bombarded the society. Ruskin and Schor provide examples why advertising has an effect on people’s health. Marketing related diseases afflicting people in the United States, and especially children, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and smoking-related illnesses. “Each day, about 2,000 U.S. children begin to smoke, and about one-third of them will die from tobacco-related illnesses” (Ackley 366). Children are inundated with advertising for high calorie junk food and fast food, and, predictably, 15 percent of U.S. children aged 6 to 19 are now overweight (Ackley 366). Commercialism promotes future negative effects and consumers don’t realize it.
Obesity in the United States, which the media has labeled a national crisis, has also been connected to poverty rates. Big fast food industry’s target poor communities, and spend millions of dollars each year to create advertising that appeals to these specific areas. These industry’s also target naïve children when advertising because they know that eating habits developed in childhood are usually carried into adulthood. Children who are exposed to television advertisements for unhealthy food and who are not educated well enough on good nutrition will grow up and feed their families the same unhealthy foods they ate as kids. A big way fast food giants are able to make certain young people have access to unhealthy food is by strategically placing franchises in close proximity to schools. They will often place three times as many outlets within walking distance of schools than in areas where there are no schools nearby. The way fast food advertising is targeted towards children is very alarming considering how important good nutrition is for young people and how a child’s eating habits can affect their growth and
Youth obesity is an escalating problem which causes harmful, unfavourable effects and can intensify and become fatal when it is carried on into adulthood (Chou, Rashad & Grossman, 2005). Such harmful effects of obesity include various cancers, cardiovascular, orthopaedic and metabolic diseases and several other disorders such as psychiatric complications (Lobstein and Dibb, 2005). From this, it is undeniable that identifying the relationship between the advertising of junk food and the increased rate in youth obesity is essential in order to generate suggestions or methods in which this may be prevented or reduced significantly. Advocates of health have been attentive towards the obesity epidemic and have been meticulously focusing on advertising as a causative factor as advertisements are consistently promoting junk food on television (Harris, Bargh and Bronwell, 2009). Suc...
Arby’s is a fast food chain started in 1964, by founders, Leroy and Forrest Raffel. The first Arby’s opened was a sandwich shop in Boardman, Ohio. The idea was to serve up something quickly and was not a hamburger; Arby’s served up hot, freshly sliced roast beef sandwiches ("Arby's", n.d.). Arby’s does not have the size of other popular fast food franchises, Subway, Mc Donald’s, or Burger King. Arby’s currently operates in about 3,400 locations, in 48 states and five countries: U.S., Canada, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar ("Arby's", n.d.). Arby’s menu has stayed very close to the original for almost thirty years. In 1991, they introduced salads, and sandwiches with less than 300 calories. In 2001, they introduced and heavily marketed a new line of sandwiches the Market Fresh sandwiches. Arby’s then added wraps to the Market Fresh menu three years later ("Arby's", n.d.). The Advertising strategy for the Market Fresh Menu included radio, TV commercials, and magazine ads. Advertisement promoting Market Fresh menu items showed premium deli style sandwiches made with fresh ingredients. For consumers that wanted a healthier choice when it came to fast food options. The wraps add to Arby's Market Fresh menu were to give customers more unique tasting, high-quality options in fast food dining. Even the menu name chosen elicits certain images for a consumer. The term market conjures images of picking fresh fruits and vegetables from the farmers market. The term fresh has consumers believing that the food is made on the spot for each order. Where other fast food restaurants, like Subway, slice it before the meat reaches stores. Arby’s advertising campaign “Slicing Up Freshness”, which highlights the chain’s freshly sliced sandwich m...
In this paper, it will focus on how junk food marketing impacts childhood obesity. Childhood obesity continues to be on the rise from junk food marketing because of the schools food policies and vending machines, increased junk food available at supermarkets and advertisements in social media.
Commercials make the viewer think about the product being advertised. Because of the amount of television children watch throughout the week, it allows the children to be exposed to the information over and over again. Per year, children are known to view thousands of fast food commercials. On a daily basis, a teen will usually view five advertisements and a child aged six to eleven will see around four advertisements (Burger Battles 4). Businesses use this strategy to “speak directly to children” (Ruskin 3). Although the big businesses in the fast ...
Millionaire food companies compel and attract customers through advertisements. Wonderful presentations and happy actors on TV are strategically used to state the normality to eat a tempting 2000 calories packed burger. The Advertisements is the secret weapon of the monopoly of these companies. “The processed-food industry should be seen as a public health menace” views by Kelly Brownell, from a Yale University professor of psychology and public health (Moss 3). Today, tobacco advertisements upset the parents of children, but poor diet advertisements are primarily ignored. (Moss
For decades, researchers and scientists have been studying on the impact of anti-smoking advertising campaigns .As a result of some research , main question arises : “do anti-smoking ads really have an impact on people’s decision about quitting smoking?” or “do they really work?” It is a controversial issue and plenty of studies and investigations support that there is no clear evidence to prove they have a significant influence on adults’ or youth’ decisions. The most striking reason of why anti-smoking ads fail is that there is not enough attention to encourage smokers or they are not supposed to prevent people from smoking. The reason is advertisements are made to profit .Anti-smoking ads are not advantageous or profitable. Thus, tobacco companies use their marketing expenditures to promote smoking. Their main objective is to encourage people to start smoking. According to Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in 2003, cigarette companies increased their product marketing and promotional spending to $15.15 billion, while lowering their spending on youth smoking prevention programs to $72.9 million. In other words, tobacco companies spent more than 200 times on product marketing than on prevention (Schmidt,2013).In addition to first reason there is not complete focusing and enough effort. Most advertisements are parent-targeted. They forget that there is a huge percent of youth smoking. However, parent-targeted ads are insufficient in terms of their narrative and executional style. When designing an advertising campaign, at least four important issues must be addressed: the message content(what to say), the executional style(how to say),the target audience(whom to say it and hence, which media to choose),and budget (Pechmann&Reib...
Tobacco is a 100 percent legal substance that some want banned altogether.Tobacco has been a controversial substance ever since doctors found that it causes health problems, but the problem does not lie with the substance. Many people choose to smoke even with though the majority of studies prove that smoking is unhealthy. There is a fine line between tobacco companies selling their product and forcing it into the publics mouths when it is clear that many are more than willing to pay for tobacco. Although tobacco advertising can negatively influence young people, the government should not ban tobacco companies from advertising in media because they are trying to influence better choices, go by the
Worcester Polytechnic Institution. "Fast Food Marketing to Children." Public Health Communication. (2007). http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-082107-231740/unrestricted/Appendix_1.pdf (accessed February 17, 2014).
All women desire beauty. As myriads of women seek a perfect body shape and attractiveness, they will have interest in having weight loss treatment. In fact, losing weight has come into a vogue. People, especially female, do not take their weight into serious account but follow the others blindly and participate in weight loss programmes. Patently, the main culprit of this phenomenon is the omnipresent weight loss advertisements. The slimming companies use advertising as a tool to inculcate the concept that being thin is equal to beauty into people’ minds. The repetitive weight loss advertisements seem to be successful in conveying the wrong message to every citizen. Some girls who are of tender age may easily be susceptible to the advertisements and participate in the weight loss treatment without a second thought. The weight loss advertising has definitely caused adverse effects on the youngsters and women. The adverse effects are in threefold. They are giving an illusion to women, coercing them into losing weight and providing a wrong means to lose weight.
As mentioned before, unrealistic media images are very prevalent. This creates the illusion that females who match the ideal seem like the norm rather than the exception. These perceptions and the constant comparisons lead to the cultivation theory which is known as the contributions media exposure makes to the viewer’s perceptions of social reality (Von Vonderen and Kinnally 53). The repetitiveness of these images influences the individual’s ability to understand that the images are unrealistic. Over time the nearly impossible standard of beauty is adopted and perceived as “reality.” People who watch heavy amounts of TV are more likely to see the real world according to what they have watched. Viewers often seek out programming that reinforces their beliefs, further strengthening their attitudes. If a woman has low self-esteem and views media that portrays emaciated models as beautiful, those negative attitudes will only be reinforced. A person’s level of awareness of the characteristics portrayed by the media is an indicator on how they will internalize these images. Females that are more aware of the media’s effects are more likely to be resilient to body image concerns and females that are unaware are more likely to show symptoms of body disturbance (Serdar). Therefore, if a woman is unable to determine that the media is unrealistic she will be more likely to internalize the images and be more prone to body dissatisfaction.
As a little girl I loved watching television shows on Saturday mornings. I’d get upset when a show would proceed to commercial. That is until I watched the shiny new toy being played with by the girl my age and of course the cool new one that came into the happy meal, then I’d forget. After seeing the appealing commercial I’d run to my mom and try to slickly mention it. “You know McDonalds has a new Monster’s Inc. toy in their happy meal. Isn’t that great? “Now I realize that back then I was targeted by big companies to beg my parents for things that I didn’t need or that wasn’t good for me in order to make money. Advertising today is affecting the health of today’s children because they eat the unhealthy foods advertised to them on: television, the internet, and even at school. Therefore, an impassioned discussion of possible solutions has been brewing.
It became so clear that junk foods lead to a punch of catastrophic diseases like obesity, type two diabetes, vascular diseases and cardiac disorders. Those kinds of diseases cost more than $150 billion annually, just to diagnose, treat people who suffer from them. That disease is chronic and leads to many health-related issues, for example, obesity considers a risk factor for type two diabetes, and high blood pressure, joint disorders and many others (The Denver Post 2012). The key of preventing many chronic problems is nutrition. Low income plays an important role of limiting most people to buy and eat a healthy diet and in the other hand, it is easy for people budgets to purchase junk foods. So controlling the prices of healthy foods to be suitable for all people make good nutrition available for everyone. Adequate diets mean decreasing the epidemic of those serious diseases, and stopping the spread and break the bad sequences that may happen. Long-term exposure to junk foods that are full with chemicals like additives, preservatives have led to chronic illnesses difficult to treat. Also, the chemical added to junk foods are tasted unique and made millions of people becoming addicted to them and are available everywhere for example in restaurants, cafes, lunchrooms (The Denver Post