Junk Food Advertisements During Children's Programs

It has been recently reported by the Martens and Schneider (Guardian, 2009) that billions of pounds are spent every day by the junk food companies on persuading children to consume their products. In addition, an American study shows that during Saturday morning, when children are more likely to be watching, one food commercial is shown every eight minutes and which considered an alarming rate (Bell, 2009). Should government allow these companies to advertise their products on television during children’s shows? Some people agree that these companies should be allowed to do that as it is one way of making profits and is completely legal. However, a large proportion of people believe that allowing these companies and firms to advertise their products on the media can lead to many serious consequences for children such as obesity, non nutritional eating habit and other problems within the individual families.

The first reason that junk food advertisements should be banned during children’s programmes is that they might lead to childhood obesity which is considered to be linked with the amount of commercials watched. This fact could be illustrated by the noticeable increase in the rate of overweight children which was 13% of those aged 6-10 and 14% of aged 12-19 during the last thirty years which obviously have faced a significant increase in the commercials rate (ScienceDaily, 2008). Since most of the advertised products are high-fat and high-sugar, the consumption of this food is likely to result in obesity. Many people believe that banning these commercial would cut the rate of this overweight children. Moreover, a new study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research states that banning fast food advertisements i...

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... the main victim of these commercials. If government did not act toward this issue by prohibiting this way of marketing, children would face many problems especially in the following years. In addition, these advertisements would affect several aspects in children’s life such as health, habits and relationships within the families. Moreover, commercials might also result in changing the value that children gain during their first years. An extreme banning is believed to improve the general health of children. It is also considered a way of encouraging young people to eat healthy food and to help them in distinguishing between commercials message and other programmes. Recent statistics show many alarming rate associated to this problem. For this reason, officials should ban these advertisements and take into account the health and the future of the children.