Advertising and Food Connection

The less healthy a food is the more money companies spend on its marketing. Advertising is a multi-billion industry charged with stimulating the buying impulses of the biggest consumer society on the face of the earth. We are constantly bombarded with ads encouraging us to eat and drink more. From the billboard on the side of the bus to the back cover of a stranger’s magazine on the subway, from commercials slotted between songs on the radio to the ones that interrupt our favorite television shows, we are inundated by commercial messages every day.

For children, it’s even worse. Every Saturday morning, children are bombarded with about 200 junk food ads for high-sugar and high-fat foods like Pop-tarts, cereal bars and many types of processed cookies, cakes and snacks. Is this really what we want to teach young people in America today? Good nutrition is crucial in the formative years, but our kids are eating junk, especially in the school system, and it shows. We now have an obesity epidemic among children. Scientists predict our children are the first generation in American history to live shorter lives than their parents.