A Weighty Matter: Marketing of Unhealthy Foods and Drinks to Children

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A Weighty Matter: Marketing of Unhealthy Foods and Drinks to Children
Unhealthy food, popularly known as junk food, is the type of food whose importance to the body is marginal as it adds very few nutrients to the body. The greater percentage of most unhealthy foods contains calories, sugar, salt, and fat in alarmingly high quantities. Unhealthy foods also contain additives and preservatives, which are made from chemical substances whose cumulative effect in the body is detrimental. In such foods, essential nutrients such as proteins, vitamins, and minerals are usually in negligible quantities. The physical effect of unhealthy or junk foods is obesity and numerous related complications (Lundborg 2). However, despite the fact that these kinds of food are regarded as unhealthy, many people still go for them. Interestingly, marketing of these foods has influenced people’s purchasing behavior, which is not wholly influenced by the taste of the foods as is expected (Peeters et. al. 3). Companies producing unhealthy food conduct intensive marketing to attract families with children through advertisements, actors, celebrity figures, and gifts (such as toys) to buy their products. Based on this hypothesis, this paper will cover an interview with Dr. Hui Qing Lu, an economy teacher at the Sun Yat-Sen University located in Guangzhou, China.
According to the interviewee, Dr. Lu, the food industry spends billions of dollars annually in marketing of their products to children and teenagers. This has become a major concern in the U.S. and all over the world as well, because most of these foods are unhealthy. Food marketing, by description, is the process used by food companies to persuade consumption of their products. Food marketing mainly involves marketing of unhealthy food to the main target market – children. Some of the common unhealthy foods come in the form of snacks, which most people buy for convenience and immediate satisfaction. Snacks mostly include chewing gums, candy, fast foods, sugary breakfast cereals, sweet desserts, salty snacks, baked foods, and carbonated soft drinks, though they are not totally limited to these. Fast foods fall under different classifications depending on nutritional value, but most of them are usually unhealthy. These include pizza, hamburgers, hotdogs, French fries, burritos, tacos, and meat pies, among many others.
The statistics regarding unhealthy foods and children are appalling. The saddening part of it all is that the target market for unhealthy foods and beverages are children and teenagers, at a time when they should instead establish healthy eating habits. Junk foods, through the current aggressive and deceptive marketing to children, have become the greatest worldwide contributors to diabetes, hypertension, and stroke. In America, one out of every three children suffers obesity or is overweight, and this affects their health negatively over their lifetime (Molnar 504). Throughout the world, almost 50 million preschoolers are obese or overweight. Almost half of children’s diets contain unhealthy fats and sugars, with only 20% of children aged between six and nineteen eating the recommended servings of fruits, vegetables, fiber-rich foods, and water. Only 8% of all cereals and grains that children consume are whole, despite the numerous adverts asserting that their products are whole. Again, more than 50% of products advertised to contain real fruits contain no fruit constituents at all (Peeters et. al. 4).
Marketers target children and teenagers because they are good at influencing their parents’ purchasing decisions, not to mention that some already have their own purchasing power. Furthermore, children and teenagers are potential adult consumers in the future. Each day, children aged between two and nineteen watch an average of over 15 food product commercials. In all these commercials, about 98% of them feature and promote food products with high levels of fats, sugar, salt, and sodium. About 80% of all food commercials promote foods that are low in fiber. Most of these commercials target both children and parents by using popular cartoons and celebrity figures depicting these foods to be great sources of vitamins, fiber, or whole grains. Such marketing has been found to increase preference, purchasing, and consumption for advertised foods, and requests or tantrums to persuade parents to purchase the advertized foods (Powell & Chaloupka 795).
Though TV commercials are still the primary methods of advertising unhealthy foods, food marketing has evolved rapidly because of the advancement of digital technology. Food and beverage marketers are aggressive in marketing their products through the internet, cell phones, text messaging, in movies, computer games, video consoles, and even in schools. The marketers design these adverts in such a way that the products are portrayed as appealing to the consumer in a fun and interactive way. This way, even parents are unable to protect their children from disproportionate advertising of unhealthy foods and beverages. According to media literacy specialists, only a deliberate and repeated mental effort can help a child or teenager to resist the tempting food adverts. However, children and teenagers cannot think critically about adverts without external prompting by an older person, and it becomes almost impossible to argue that they can fight off these messages on their own.
When examining advertising, one can do so from two perspectives – the micro level and the societal views (Richardson). The micro level view considers the tactics that advertisers use to persuade and manipulate potential customers. Advertisers using this tactic usually use visual imagery to subtly shape the consciousness and behavioral patterns of the audience. This is done by endorsing some thought patterns and behaviors while invalidating others. Such adverts do not place a lot of emphasis on the product information, but instead emphasize more on the social uses and the symbolism of the product. The societal view examines the tactics advertisers use to depict economic and cultural power to its potential customers. Such adverts usually create a buying mood by basing the content of the ad on a specific demographical factor of the target audience so that the content of the ad becomes less important than the person being targeted. Such adverts are light, nonpolitical, and carefully noncontroversial (Richardson).
All adverts, regardless of their design or tactic, have certain subtle effects on the viewer. Adverts promote images that are not truthful but are presented in a way that makes them appear truthful. Therefore, consumers are convinces that if they purchase the product, they will feel happier, look younger or more attractive because the advert ‘proves’ it. Advertisers also repeat messages that portray minute differences between two products or aspects of a single product, a psychological trick that causes the mind to settle on a preferred product or a preferred aspect of a product subconsciously. Another trick about repetition is that it influences the purchasing decision of consumers, even when the advert being repeated is annoying. Advertisers also disguise their adverts as entertainment, a tactic known as ‘advertainment’ (Powell & Chaloupka 795). They also use product placement strategy, where they place their product alongside or within a certain television program or event, and this makes the audience think that the main focus is on the program or event, but the placed product sticks to the subconscious part of their minds. This subconscious acknowledgement of the product usually manifests later as a conscious decision to purchase the product when they see it (Powell & Chaloupka 795).
Dr Lu, our interviewee, does not hold back her perspective on the matter. According to her, all blame may be directed to food companies and their marketing agencies, but the real culprit here is the government. She supports her opinion by proving that the World Health Organization made public i...