Today junk food rivals tobacco marketing. The current population of kids under the age of 14 in the U.S. is 61.5 million. These children alone spend $40 Billion a year on snacks, toys, electronics, the money they spend is given to them by their parents, friends, or other family members.\u00a0 Much of this money goes towards processed junk food, which is linked to the rising obesity and chronic disease rates in kids. Kids are drawn to these junk foods by marketing strategies such as: offering free toys, cartoon and super hero characters on the front of the packaging, and to make sure they are within arm\u2019s reach at the checkout aisle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\nmakes these foods worse for children? In a recent report from Time Magazine\nthese highly processed foods can lead to signs of addiction such as loss of\ncontrol, tolerance, and withdrawal. Another Time Magazine article also\ngoes on to say that \u201cobesity is a bigger global health threat than tobacco\nuse\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marketing\nto kids seems to everywhere, from TV commercials, to billboards, to even the\nvending machines\u2019 at schools. Worst being that they are not only exposed to\nthese different advertisements but they are exposed multiple times a day. A\n2013 report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) children from the age of 2 to 11\nare seeing an average of 10 commercials a day for processed foods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nreason marketing to kids is a huge market is because once kids are hooked on\nthese foods they become hooked for life. They become consistent consumers of\nthese processed foods and they grow up eating them. This response is aiding to\nthe obesity epidemic we are now facing in today\u2019s kid here in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We need\nto start taking back the diets of our youth. We need to focus on giving these\nkids the nutrition they need, vegetables need to be substituted for the high\ncaloric, high fat, highly processed foods they are used to seeing on the TV. We\nneed to cut down on the starch they are consuming everyday and be better at\nmonitoring their diets and what is going into their bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n