Fast Food Children

Great Essays
The Effects Of Fast food on Children
Fast food has completely taken over America. Fast food is consumed by people of all different regions, genders and ages. Fast food corporations are indeed targeting the children by making kids meals, kids menus, adding toys to the meals, playgrounds in the restaurants, television advertising and creating kids characters that are related to fast food to attract the children. Most importantly, the clear goal of the fast food corporation which is to “get kids to nag their parents and nag them well” (Schlosser 43). Therefore the amount of fast food consuming by children increase. According to a new report, 12% of the children’s calories come from fast food (Szabo). Fast food affect the children’s physical health
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No child is born craving for fast food. Children between the ages 2-13 should consume 1000-1700 calories, more or less depend on gender. One kid’s meal contains roughly 795 – 1020 calories. If a child eats one kid’s meal a day, he already consumed most of his calories, let alone most of the calories he consumed are fat and sugar, and the meal does not contain most of the nutrition the a child needs for his health and growth. Children consuming high fat and sugar meals would lead to serious damages. People may argue that children’s fast food addiction is the parent’s responsibility, however it is not. No matter how hard the parents try to keep their child away from fast food, they cannot, since there are fast food advertisement all around their child. For example, the Hawinen family, Carl is the mother of baby Michael, her and his father eat healthy food only, she cooks three meals at home for her family, yet Michael refuses to eat her food, he only eats fast food (Fast Food Baby). Children now grow up seeing fast food in Television and streets, and having easy access to it, as easy as downloading McDonald’s app and getting a free Big Mac …show more content…
A child can get a burger with apple slices and orange juice or milk at a fast food restaurant, yet they choose the cheeseburger with French fries and soda. Children want what they see, when they see fast food ads, they see burger, fries and soda, they do not see apples, orange juice nor milk. It is not enough to include healthy choices in the kid’s menus, restaurants need to stop advertising unhealthy food for children.
Moreover, restaurants need to improve the burgers, fries or other items in the kid’s meal and make it healthier. For instant, as reported by the US Department of Agriculture a healthier kids meal need to contain less than 500 calories, 35% of calories from fat, 10% of calories from saturated fats as well as added sugar and less than 600 mgs of sodium (Posel). Until the kid’s meals meet the requirements, Fast Food restaurants should stop advertising them. The food’s healthy standers must be applicable to all the items in the kid’s menus, not only to include healthy

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