Obesity and How it Happens

By Luke Leah and Jordan.

Since 1963 till 1980, obesity has not been going up, but in 1999 to 2000, it skyrocketed 10%. Obviously something must have happened during that time that made the rate of obese kids go up. During the time of the obesity boom commercials for children were growingly increasing and kids were spending more time on the computer or watching TV then any other task daily except sleeping. This means that kids were growing more dependent on TV and internet for news and by watching all those shows the kids are subjected to watching many commercials about food. A study in 1999 concluded that watching more than 2 hours of TV a day had an effect of obesity. For this test more than 12,000 students were involved with this test.

We learned from this article that the obesity rate was staying steady for a long time. But then commercials were more structured to younger kids. This resulted in kids doing les exercise and watching a lot more TV and going on the internet. This is a problem that can easily be solved by changing some rules about how commercials should target their audience. 

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Letters to the Editor

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There is a link between obesity and advertising. Advertising plays a big role in a person’s life who watches an excessive amount of TV. Along with the TV shows, children also see a large amount of commercials. Not all of the commercials that they see are bad and about bad food some are about things that are good for the kids. But the majority of the commercials are of only a couple companies like Burger King or McDonalds but they crank out a lot of commercials. These commercials promote unhealthy foods.

Other commercials use cartoon characters to promote their products like Tony the Tiger, Tucan Sam, Captain Crunch, Count Chocula, and Snap Crackle and Pop. The advertisers use these characters to promote their unhealthy products. Even though they say that their products are made for an excellent breakfast, they use omission to bypass the law truth and advertising. They will say that this cereal is a part of this complete breakfast and the cereal will have apples and oranges around it so the fruit makes the breakfast good. Another reason why they use these characters is because when kids see their favorite character on a box, they automatically want to buy it. This could cause a problem with childhood obesity. The kids will keep on wanting that food that has their favorite character on it.

Sincerely,

Jordan , Luke, Leah

Sources:

Kaiser, Henry J. Family Foundation. The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity. February 2004. Henry Kaiser Family Foundation. http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/The-Role-Of-Media-in-Childhood-Obesity.pdf

Costello, Todd. College Publisher Network. Blame for Childhood Obesity. 4/19/07. College Publisher Network.

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