Synthesis Essay Obesity

Kal Yewlsew Boswell Hon English 10 Feb 21, 2024.

In order to decrease childhood obesity and the way they’re influenced, the way advertisements are presented needs to be changed too. Children will give all their attention to something that interests them and the way advertisements are marketed focuses on that weakness for children.

It is ethical to market to children if it is done in a way that encourages children to eat healthy.If done properly, issues such as obesity would decrease. Obesity among children and adolescents is a widespread problem in the United States. Children are easily influenced by advertising and marketing, this can be leveraged for positive change through positive advertising. The Federal Trade Commission once said that

This demonstrates how critical the problem of childhood obesity is since such an amount of children should never have such a major nutritional problem such as obesity. Positive marketing is one tool we can use to our advantage in order to address this enormous problem. Positive advertising is not used by most businesses. Instead, in an effort to increase profits, they promote unhealthy eating. This is the reason why the majority of people believe that marketing to children is immoral, but in actuality, it's just the incorrect kind of marketing. The Federal Trade Commission had a Health and Human Services secretary interviewed, explain how children are strongly influenced by advertisements. “Children are strongly influenced by the foods they see advertised on television and elsewhere. encouraging healthy eating among children will have a significant impact on reducing the nation’s childhood obesity epidemic.”(Source E). This demonstrates how children can be influenced off of advertisements from T.V. and

can have a huge change in their lifestyle. Limiting the amount of advertisements being able to be seen by children has a major impact on their lifestyle, allowing them to be healthier. People's exposure to T.V. advertising differentiates per age group. Adults experience almost double of what Teens experience in advertisements. To go in depth “adults see an average 12,627 promos and PSAs, 32,630 Nonfood and 7,212 Food advertisements.” Teens experience an average “ 8,007 promos and PSAs, 17,670 Nonfood and 5,512 Food advertisements.”. When you check the Children’s section, there isn’t as much information compared to these other two, but there is still a lot. “7,306 promos and PSAs, 12,785 Nonfood and 5,538 Food advertisements.” This demonstrates how each age group gets exposed to T.V. advertising and how when you go in depth you can see how much advertising they can be affected by. Additionally, different age groups of children see advertisements in different ways. According to Beder, Sharon from the University of Wollongong, different age groups of children take/see advertisements in different ways. “Older children pay less attention to advertisements and are more able to differentiate between the ads and T.V. programs.” Richard Mizerski, an Australian professor, also claims the same idea but focuses on younger children. “Their cognitive structures are beginning to form and they are more sensitive to