Monopoly Unhealthy food companies will not stop feeding people junk foods until people decided to start to make time for their healthy diet and buy the healthier alternatives. Junk food companies know that they need to target most of the population: The busy people in the workforce and people in poverty. Because both population will have limited amount of time and choices to buy the healthier alternative. Processed food companies have great influence in the media and advertisement ,which is why they can attract the customers to buy and maintain presence. If people choose to buy the healthier foods, the profits will decrease. Thus, it will force the junk food companies to conform with the people’s needs: …show more content…
Why? Some of the low-income people work two to three jobs and they are too tired to buy healthy groceries for themselves. The fact that most of them are attracted to the affordability and the deliciousness of the unhealthy foods presented at the grocery stores, gas stations, and fast food restaurants. Because many low-class people are uneducated and influenceable by their peers , they are more likely to be eating the unhealthy foods. According to the article Extraordinary Science,” … the average obese person in America… is relatively poor… is surrounded by people who eat junk food and are themselves obese, and stands a good chance of living in a food desert—an area where produce tends to be hard to find, of poor quality, or …show more content…
They need extraordinary flavors that can make anybody come back for seconds and also cut the production expense in half. To do so, they must use the cheapest ingredients such as corn, sugar, and salt. These ingredients add flavor to the food , but they contain calories that leads to health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes. The companies don’t care about nutrition, because the consumers prefer taste over the bland low-calorie version of the foods. In the article Extraordinary Science , Stephen Sanger, CEO of Yoplait Yogurt company said ,“Don’t talk to me about Nutrition...” he continues, "Talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don 't run around trying to sell stuff that doesn 't taste good."(Moss 4) 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
Videos slide The problem is, many brands are doing this – most companies are relying on these misleading assumptions to fool consumers and increase the revenue and brand recognition of their products, and making it look enticing to buy due to its possible health benefits However, the government does have a system to help stop this from happening, the health star rating system. The system, introduced two years ago, has a score out of 5 for packaged and processed goods (5 being the highest), considered ‘a quick way to compare the nutritional value of processed and packaged food’ and encouraging consumers to make healthier choices. Supporters of the health star system hoped it would encourage companies to make their food healthier, and this worked for some brands. Nutri-grain, for example, found that it had only 2 stars, primarily because a full third of it was sugar.
Mark Bittman’s article “Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?” tells about how people are not really getting their money’s worth when it comes to consuming junk food. He does this by showing the differences between ordering a meal at McDonald’s and cooking a meal at home. The twenty-eight dollars that is spent to feed a family of four at McDonald’s can be put to use making a meal that could last for a couple of days and feed more than four (Bittman 660). Engineered to be addictive, hyper-processed food has a taste that makes people wanting more. Lastly, Bittman addresses the convenience of junk food provides nowadays. Therfore, the cost of junk food is not really cheaper in comparison to a home cooked meal.
“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.
He begins his argument by commenting about kids suing McDonald’s for “making them fat” (Zinczenko 462). Zinczenko ponders the absurdity of this claim considering how food choices are based on personal responsibility. However, he then considers the overwhelming availability ratio of fast food to fresh food while sympathizing he was once obese himself (Zinczenko 462). Zinczenko uses the primary argument that fast food companies are deceiving consumers with misleading advertisement, hidden nutrition facts, and calorie risks. He believes companies are encouraging the public to eat their unhealthy foods by omitting alarming information and levying “good” deals. In consequence, fast food companies are increasing the chances of obesity and diabetes in consumers by stimulating poor eating
of Philip Morris, said “People could point to these things and say, ‘They’ve got too much sugar, they’ve got too much salt […] well, that’s what the consumer wants, and we’re not putting a gun to their head to eat it. That’s what they want.” (Moss 267) However, consumers are being unconsciously forced to fund food industries that produce junk food. Companies devote much of their time and effort into manipulating us to purchase their products. For instance, Kraft’s first Lunchables campaign aimed for an audience of mothers who had far too much to do to make time to put together their own lunch for their kids. Then, they steered their advertisements to target an even more vulnerable pool of people; kids. This reeled in even more consumers because it allowed kids to be in control of what they wanted to eat, as Bob Eckert, the C.E.O. of Kraft in 1999, said, “Lunchables aren’t about lunch. It’s about kids being able to put together what they want to eat, anytime, anywhere” (Moss 268). While parents are innocently purchasing Lunchables to save time or to satisfy the wishes of their children, companies are formulating more deceiving marketing plans, further studying the psychology of customers, and conducting an excessive quantity of charts and graphs to produce a new and addictive
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
The fast food industry is one of the largest sectors of the United States economy. Companies such as Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonalds and KFC have all become household names. Each of these companies operates under a similar mission statement: to serve a quick, filling meal for a very low cost. The primary marketing medium for these companies is television where via commercials, they can portray both their products and a lifestyle. Their intense advertising focus on minorities and children, however, has begun to exacerbate the epidemic of obesity that is sweeping our nation. Fast food's televised advertising is a significant contributor to obesity in today's minority youth. By promoting unhealthy tendencies and high-calorie foods as well as an attitude that promotes tolerance of diseases such as obesity, these companies are influencing people to such a degree that it is negatively affecting their health. This dangerous marketing method is not only sweeping America, but other countries as well. The emphasis on fast food companies' immoral marketing raises the question: Are people eating for hunger or because of an advertised, influenced habit? However, we must also address whether or not fast food companies are mainly responsible, or if the blame also covers their consumers.
In the article “Don’t Blame the Eater,” David Zinczenko blames the fast food companies for causing the obesity epidemic. He told his own story as a kid growing up at the time when fast food was the most popular choice and how it made him a “portly fast-food patron” (241). He then accuses such companies of failing to put a warning label on high calorie. In addition, Zinczenko encourages the new spate of lawsuits against the food industry to give children and their busy parents an opportunity to have a better and healthier food choice. Though I concede Zinzenko’s opinion in addressing the responsibility of the food industry, I still insist that the industry is not the only one who is responsible for this “time bomb” (242). I believe the responsibility belongs to parents, who play an important role in their children’s food orientation, schools, for
It is discussed that even though junk food is something people should be eating less of it’s being promoted and produced at a mass scale. It is here where Jennings also uses a logical appeal by using statistical examples of the mass productions of unhealthy products and fast foods and how the had been supposedly “reduced” to a healthier standing but Jennings claimed that only 130 out of thousands had been reduced in moderation. He also discussed the corrupt advertising scheme set up by marketing advertisers that currently influences the way people crave fast food. This includes the easy and more accessible ways to buy fast food including drive throughs and delivery. He also incorporates how the way food looks in a commercial, “food style”, affects how people buy the product and how “food style” usually doesn’t include “edible” food at all but rather “hair tonics” or
The sole purpose of a company is to offer goods and services while making a profit. If people have a liking for food products with so many unhealthy items and are willing to buy them, the companies have no obligation to reduce the amount of added ingredients. The companies aren’t the ones forcing the public to overeat. However, these companies shouldn’t market their products to people who they can easily exploit like children and those who are penurious. Michael Moss, author of the article “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” interviews several people who worked for certain big brand companies and gives us an abundant amount of information on how the food companies make and market their food to “get us hooked”.
In “Happy Meals and Old Spice Guy”, Weiss argues that advertisements are influencing the public in a way that is making them blindly accept or be attracted to the information that is being presented to them in an aesthetic or convincing manner. Weiss implies that due to the fact that the advertisements produced by large corporations are being manipulated and conveyed through forms of social media, these corporations are able to reach out to a variety of people and attract a larger audience. It is important that she states that not only adults are affected by advertisements, but that children are as well. In her statement, “McDonald’s is buffeted by market forces,” Weiss implies that McDonald’s justifies their advertising choices based on what seems to be popular in the marketplace (224). In pointing this finger at their advertising choices, she is saying that McDonald’s is just putting a healthier face forward for the media and popularity, but is really maintaining their same “association with fatty food” (224). It is this association that is changing how society sees McDonald’s and also why parents would opt to not allow their children to consume food that would easily be seen as unhealthy for them.
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
...ng sugar and fats. The junk food companies know this, but they don’t care, because it makes them rich. In summary, this is why by law, all fast-food companies should have forced limitations on distribution which has lead to the rise of obesity in America.
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