Teen Obesity

   Iyanna Garry

You're in high school, or junior high, and you're fat. Your stomach exceeds your chest, you go to school and have to deal with kids pointing and laughing at you. After school, you come home and you feel so ashamed about yourself that you cry and eat Twinkies and Oreos to drown your sorrows. After your period of bingeing, you sit down and watch TV. The first thing you see is a McDonald's commercial about a new item on the Dollar Menu. And you're feeling hungry again. Who is to blame for this cycle? Kids at school? Your parents? Yourself? The media?

              "The media has some responsibility," says Thomas O'Hanlon, a mass communications professor of CUNY-Lehman College. "The media attracts to people. People feel that anything they see advertised is good, especially children. They can't tell the difference to good or bad, whether it's a toy or food." Children are targets to food advertising. Research shows that 32% of children ads are about candy, 31% are about cereal, and 9% are about fast food. "Compare the budget of the 5-A-Day campaign and the budget of the companies of food advertisements," says Susan Tree, a Dietetic Internship Coordinator of CUNY-Lehman College. "See what people will choose to eat."

The companies that produce these advertisements will sacrifice anything to get children to buy their product. Researchers say that fast food companies spend up to $3 billion on advertising alone. It's these commercials that play mental games with kids; along with a Happy Meal or Big Kids Meal that comes with a new toy affiliated with a favorite movie or TV show. "Commercials give the impression that [kids] deserve and earn to eat [their product]." Fast food restaurants' burgers and chicken fingers can contain anything from e-coli to an insect on the inside, but no one can tell from just looking on the outside. They see sweet, juicy, well-cooked meat. "If food is cooked and presented well, kids will eat," Tree says.

               Not only are the food ads helping increase the rates of obesity in children, but they're also helping increase the deterioration of their health with their cheap products. "Fat from these foods hurt the arteries more than fat from butter. They use ingredients that could be close to plastic," says O'Hanlon. "The trouble is that the companies are using these ingredients because they are cheaper and people will buy them." KFC, a fast food restaurant that's familiar with controversy, has been threatened with boycotts from the African American community for their knowledge of KFC's manufacture of cloned chickens filled with toxins. One of the other major reasons behind this boycott is that the Black community has the greatest amount of consumers of the fast food industry. This is why the highest percentages of obese people are African Americans, who are the majority of the low-income-family population. "All we see is what is the cheapest, especially with one- or two-income families," says Tree, "frozen vegetables are expensive. Low-income families do not have access to healthful foods." Not only is the family income an important factor, but also the amount of home-cooked meals is made at home. "We're so overproduced, fast food is convenient. During the 50's and 60's, the feminist movement encouraged women to get out of the kitchen."   With no one at home to cook meals, "food companies were helping out."

This epidemic is not something to turn our cheeks away from. Child obesity has introduced children to diseases they were never exposed to before. "Kids are dealing with medical problems that were once associated with middle-aged adults, like high cholesterol, heart disease and type-1 and type-2 diabetes. They were once called adult and child diabetes. Now, [children] can get either," says Tree. The advertising industry's poor attempt at finding a solution to child obesity has benefited no one, except the advertising industry. "Commercials promoting vitamin and energy water is complete rubbish. People can get dehydrated" with these vitamin & energy water drinks as much as with regular water. "You hear commercials about diet plans, like TrimSpa, talking about no sweating, no exercise needed, etc. Look at the fine print at the bottom of the screen." Like most diet pill commercials, written at the bottom is: "Diet and exercise improve results. Results not typical and may vary. Please read labels prior to purchase and consult your physician. Use as directed. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." Why do TrimSpa users need to diet and exercise to improve their results? Isn't the lack of diet and exercise the whole point of taking the diet pill? "It's sneaky and misleading..."

Next, Child Obesity Part II: The Parents' and Self's Role in Obesity.