3. Shady Marketing?

An effective tool that Fast Food Restaurants use to trick the public is media corruption. Many of the commercials that they use to develop their products are very uplifting commercials that have no warning or foreshadowing of what will happen if you continue to eat there. They portray their customers as skinny, fit, and care free so to portray a false image of what is the truth. They plan these commercials strategically during shows that they know vulnerable people will watch, such as children watching cartoons. Children will believe nearly anything that they see on the television. According to Health, Risk & Society, “Food advertising during children’s television programs have been identified as one contributing factor to childhood obesity” (Mehta, par. 2). Because of shady advertising such as this, adolescent obesity has gone through the roof and is worse than ever before. Fattening foods such as these should not be allowed to advertise their products openly. Their products are killing many of our population and should be stopped as soon as possible. Instead healthy foods should be advertised to encourage healthy behavior as well as commercials that promote exercise. Udell argued,
that children were ‘vulnerable, impressionable, trusting and easy targets’. The role of advertising was to ‘seduce’ and ‘manipulate the watcher’. ‘Advertisements were described as aggressive, ruthless and full of cheap gimmicks’. Children were depicted as sitting ‘trance-like’ starring at television, ‘fed a diet of ads that put them under the spells of marketing techniques’. Advertising was portrayed as an ‘insidious force from which children have little protection’. The advertising industry was described as ‘unscrupulous’ and ‘giants’ who preyed on their audiences weakness and vulnerabilities. ‘This exploitation of children’ said on article is ‘deplorable.’ (Udell, par. 42)

These ruthless companies will prey on our young and corrupt their vulnerable minds. I propose that they should no longer be able to advertise products that may directly cause harm to the community with obesity or other serious health related issues. If fast food restaurants are causing harm to our nation, why have we not put a stop to it?