Maybe reading isn’t so good for kids after all? Telegraph UK has a report that says Food manufacturers are using sophisticated tactics to market sweets, fast food and sugary breakfast cereals at children in their homes, the Food Commission pressure group said yesterday.
Following criticism of junk food adverts on television, youngsters are being exposed to marketing through story books, educational materials, toys and games.
The hell?
Okay, dammit, I’m back. I’ve been lurking for a while, but this one really set off my BS detector. I got a Level 8 reading which was most impressive since the last Washington state gubernatorial election only rated a 7.6.
Marketing sweets and junk food to kids is kind of like marketing meat to a lioness. Back before TV, back before cheap books and magazines, yes even back before billboards; kids wanted sweets and junk food. Last I checked, nothing’s changed. I got a one year old boy who knows well the difference between vegetable turkey and peach cobbler. Anyone wanna take a guess which he prefers?
The responsibility to keep our kid’s junk food intake to an level of sanity still rests in the same place it always has, the parents. Advertisements may market to kids, but a well trained child and a logically minded parent always trump whatever Madison Avenue tries to foist on us.
When I was growing up, Transformers were huge. (Not that anything’s changed. I still have a Defensor and Superion sitting alongside my books. If you actually know what those things are without Googling, ten points to you. An extra ten bonus points if you can name the robots that make up Defensor and Superion.) After school I’d sit and watch my cartoons, namely lots of Bugs Bunny and Transformers. Obviously, they’d advertise Transformers toys during the commercials for the Transformers show. Since I was a huge Transformers fan, I’d see the ads in comics, magazines, etc. But ya know something? No matter how many ads I’d seen, no matter how much I might want a certain toy, I knew that when my parents said “No” they actually meant “NO, DAMMIT.” And I knew that, for the time being, I could kiss that toy goodbye. That doesn’t mean they might not get it for me later on, but just because I saw an ad and just because I wanted it doesn’t mean I got it. All of this applied to other toys, foods, breakfast cereals, and sweets.
Advertisements don’t make kids fat. Unthinking, apathetic parents make kids fat.