"RESEARCH PAPER"

Fast food advertisements do impact or lives. There are studies over it and it’s a fact "what we are seeing is what we are eating" and we can not lie about it. From breakfast to dinner majority people do depend on fast food. How we know what’s available for breakfast, lunch or dinner? If it wouldn't be the advertisement how would we know?

"GOOD MORNING WE ARE OPEN FOR BUSINESS"

                            

"GET A BIG BURGER FOR LUNCH"

"DON`T SLEEP YET DINNER IS JUST SERVED"

Traditional way of eating home cooking food is not on the menu of our everyday lives anymore, and the above picture is clear example why we don’t need to. These advertisements presented on the big billboards, gives invitation to all in such an irresistible way that we hardly could resist. Two thirds of food ads during popular children television programs promote junk food.

Schor, By. "From Tastes Great to Cool: Children's Food Marketing and the Rise of the Symbolic - Health News - RedOrbit." RedOrbit – Science, Space, Technology, Health News and Information. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/952736/from_tastes_great_to_cool_childrens_food_marketing_and_the/index.html>. 

           Margaret Gamble and Nancy Cotugna's 1996 content analysis of Saturday morning cartoons by found that 63% of the 353 advertisements in this time slot were for food products. Among these commercials, cereal ads comprised 40% of the total, with the proportion in the high sugar category increasing from 23 to 34.5% between 1991 and 1996. The authors reported that among nearly 1,400 food ads studied between 1972 and 1996, there were no commercials advertising fruits and vegetables with the exception of a few Public Service Announcements.22 (The lack of fruit and vegetable advertising is due to the fact that almost none, with the prominent exception of Chiquita Bananas, are branded.)

            Children are also heavily exposed to food ads during prime time viewing hours. A 1998 content analysis during the top-ranked prime- time shows for children aged two to eleven found that 23% of the commercials were for food, and 40% of those were for fast-food restaurants.23 Excluding fast-foods, 41% of the advertised foods were in the fats, oils and sweets category of the United States Department of Agriculture's food pyramid. A similar percentage fell into the grains category, and nearly half of those had either a high fat or sugar content.24 Preliminary content analysis done by the authors in the summer of 2006 have found that 44.4 % of ads on children networks during weekend mornings and the after-school block are for foods.25 Notably, even as the range of products advertised directly to children rises, food remains by far the dominant category.

            Food marketing to children has moved beyond the television set, however. Packaging has become a form of advertisement, as companies innovate by putting food into "cool" new containers or adding licensed characters, games, and ads for other branded foods. Another marketing strategy is product placement, in which food companies pay producers of music videos, radio, books, comic strips, songs, plays, and movies to place the product in the setting.26 This strategy is thought to have begun in 1982 when sales of Hershey's Reese's Pieces Candy rose 65% in the month following the release of the movie E.T., The Extra Terrestrial, where the product had a prominent placement.27 The effectiveness of product placement is thought to be on account of its ability to avoid seeming like a sales pitch, as well as its association with highly valued celebrities. Product placements also cannot be zapped out, unlike 30-second spots. 

    

            Above pictures might be delicious looking and eye catching too, the way they made those sandwiches they do look nice, but what’s is in it? Yes, we can read meat, crab, and steak but did they mention anything about "processed meat item" or "1500 to 3000 calorie range”. They didn't because that is the whole purpose just to sell for business. So, in other words advertisements are also now responsible for public health. Just by looking at those ads we do eat stuffs which aren’t totally healthy.

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/7618.pdf

    This statistic pic is from Kaiser family foundation.kaiser foundation deals with health policy and communications, the Kaiser Family Foundation is a non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the U.S., as well as the U.S. role in global health policy.

     According to Kaiser family foundation young children cannot distinguish between programming content and advertisement while another study shows that children’s choice of food is impacted by the ads they saw.  In another word exposure of fast food affects children’s dietary intake. Children’s today are exposed to fast food at all places.  Fast food advertisement covers every aspect of a children’s life and therefore fast food advertisement should be banned or there had to be limitations to it.