Blog 8

It’s all about Fast Food, everywhere you go there is one on every corner you see. When you think of fast food such as McDonalds, you think of kids. McDonalds has a playhouse, happy meal, and toys. Parents bring them because of the fun they can do at McDonalds, eat and play, every kid’s dream. To all the madness of the kids always wanting to be at McDonalds was told by Schlosser, from the book “Fast Food Nation” was advertising.

Advertising had a major role to getting children’s attention. Kids are always spending their time watching television. As I wrote in blog five, starting at the age of two months was when they started attracting children when they watch TV. Playland is what they call their jungle gym at McDonalds. Kids would want their parents to bring them there, of course to play, another step to attracting them to go to McDonald. Parents usually surrender when their children annoy them to bring them to a place such as McDonald. Every Business has a market and apparently that’s where McDonald has put their money on, which are kids. Ray Kroc was very clever in doing that. But knowing that its literally fast food, doesn’t make the food healthy at all. Everything that’s there basically has a lot of preservatives and other chemicals, which can possibly lead to obesity.

Getting their children’s attention is them buying the McDonald food itself. It’s either the parents working and doesn’t really spend time with their kids, so they buy fast food to make them happy, or they give what their child wants in any kind of way, beg or not. But are the parents doing right thing by giving their child unhealthy food? For me, that’s a no, which is the parent’s responsibility in taking care of their son(s)/ daughter(s) and keeping them in good health. I would say once in a blue treat them to McDonalds, but not every day, or buying them because of guilty feelings. Advertising to kids can be great, but not to a point where they are sending the wrong message, because of a business matter. Even though Advertising seems to be like that, I guess that’s just how the marketing and business works. It’s neither the government nor the fast food industries fault, it’s just their way to having food on the go, when you’re in rush, for example New Yorkers are always on the run. But the issue is, it’s the parents’ choice to what they want to give their kids. Parents should feed their kids healthy foods, if not, tis leading to obesity at a young age, I know someone who feeds her child whatever she wants, and is not over weight at a young age of 11 years old. What I said it’s the parent’s responsibility, it would later on lead to health problems as they get older.

Obesity is the major issue; I read on cdv.gov that the children at the age of 6-11 who are obese made an increase from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. That’s because of the parents giving in on their children with foods that are faster to give, faster to eat and easy to enjoy, also not caring what kind of chemicals and preservatives are inside. I honestly don’t take any blame for the fast food industry and government. It’s all about marketing and advertisement for them, but the purpose is for the parental to take control, with feeding their kids healthier foods even though they tend to feel guilty, just what Schlosser said. I would say it’s better to feel guilty than to feed my kids something bad, and try to spend better time with them