WASHINGTON— It’s hard to blame people for craving fast food when they are inundated with advertising from such a young age. But what’s disturbing is just how far fast food companies will go to target kids from groups already more likely to suffer from obesity — including the poor, rural Americans and black Americans.
In a new study, a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Arizona State University found that fast food chains in predominantly black neighborhoods were more than 60 percent more likely to advertise to children than in predominantly white neighborhoods. The researchers also found that fast food restaurants in middle- and low-income areas tended to direct their ads toward children more often than those in high-income neighborhoods, and those in rural communities tended to market their products to kids more often than those in more urban settings
“Fast food restaurants in black neighborhoods have significantly higher odds of using kids’ meal toy displays to market their products to children compared to restaurants in white neighborhoods,” said Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, the lead author of the study. “The associations we observe are troubling because we know that black children are at higher risk for consuming unhealthy diets including fast food, and have higher prevalence of obesity.”
The Burger Kings and McDonald’s of America have long known that dangling toys and other paraphernalia before children is a choice way to keep them coming back – or, at the very least, asking their parents to return. But the study, which analyzed data from more than 6,700 restaurants around the country, has finally sketched out precisely how this is happening.
More than 20 percent of all the restaurants, and 31 percent of the chain restaurants used child-directed marketing— a category that includes advertisements with cartoon characters, television personalities, movie stars and sports figures, as well as displays with kids’ meal toys, three-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, and play areas.
The danger of pitching french fries, hamburgers and other fast foods to kids is that it can lead to an unbalanced and potentially harmful diet— not only in childhood, but in adolescence and even adulthood. Children who eat fast foods tend to eat more calories, fat, sodium, and sugars, and less fruits, vegetables, and dairy than those who don’t. Eating fast food has also been found to cause higher body fat and insulin levels in adolescence, and an increased risk of obesity in adulthood.
Already, fast foods account for too many calories and feed too many children in this country. Nearly a third of American kids between the ages of 2 and 11 – and nearly half of those aged 12 to 19 – eat or drink something from a fast food restaurant each day, according to a study from 2008. And fast food accounts for roughly 13 percent of total calories eaten by children and teenagers aged 2 to 18 in the United States.
Ferdman is a reporter for Wonkblog covering food, economics, immigration and other things. He was previously a staff writer at Quartz.
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