Cartoons and Kids: How Advertising Affects Obesity in Children

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It’s the usual day in the grocery. You stroll around the shelves, looking for that organic cereal or milk when you notice a mother and child struggling over a box of cereals. You don’t really pay much attention but you can pretty much hear the wails of the child:

“But I want this. It’s got W*n*ie the P**h on it.”

Although the reasoning is quite silly, and it’s possible that you’re laughing about it, the fact here is that it’s real. Researchers have found that children are more likely to buy cereals that have a famous cartoon character on it than cereals without one. The researchers further revealed that children do respond positively to healthy food, but the main driver for them to buy would be the cartoon characters used to advertise the products.

Such finding doesn’t really come as a surprise. Over the past decades, the number of children suffering from obesity has been on the rise. Between the periods of 1976-1980 and 2007-2008, children with obesity have more than doubled in terms of numbers. Such trend can be quite alarming for parents and educators alike. If this continues, then number of children who are suffering from obesity will continue to increase.

Obesity is known to be a scourge for many. It is the source of various medical problems like high blood pressure, heart attack, and cancer. Children suffering from obesity are also likely to suffer from such diseases even earlier in life. This puts into the fore the eating habits of children, particularly with the kind of food that they consume every day.

Children can be quite the impressionable lot. They are easily swayed by advertising and commercials that have been designed to target their age group. And if the research done shows any indication, then we can say that advertisers have long been tapping into this lucrative market. If only this is used for promoting healthier eating, then this would not be a problem then. The only issue here is the kind of food that children get to buy.

Well, at least we now know how to deal with such advertising tactics. Since we’re now aware of the inner dynamics of advertising, we can now better protect and advise our kids on the shows they watch (and the food they eat).

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