To what extent do you believe that marketers and advertisers (along with manufacturers) are responsible for the apparent increase in childhood obesity? Or, are there social factors that are to blame?

To what extent do you believe that marketers and advertisers (along with manufacturers) are responsible for the apparent increase in childhood obesity? Or, are there social factors that are to blame?

 

Abstract

In this report, the reasons of the evident increase in childhood obesity will be discussed. Through a secondary research, specific reasons that explain the booming childhood obesity phenomenon are addressed. Childhood obesity became a public heath priority as it was discovered that 1 out of 3 children are obese and such statistic was expected to double in the coming years. It was found out that both marketing and social factors including family and school roles are significant contributors to increased childhood obesity incidence.  

 

Keywords: childhood obesity, marketing and advertisement, social factors and environmental factors

 

Introduction

            Now in the forefront of international debates, childhood obesity is now viewed as both a social and health challenge and it is currently approaching an epidemic proportion. Simply, a child can be considered as an obese or overweight if his or her body weight is more than his or her age, gender and height. Childhood obesity became a public heath priority as the figures suggest that 1 out of 3 children are obese and such statistic was expected to double in the coming years. Nevertheless, there are various, overarching reasons to which childhood obesity was built upon. On the one hand, marketers and advertisers are blamed for the ballooning numbers of obese children worldwide and on the other, different social factors are regarded as the culprit for the growing numbers. We shall see in the progress of this report whether marketing and advertising or social factors or the combinations are to be blamed for the apparent increase in childhood obesity.  

 

Materials/Methods

            Majority of the research is secondary for the purpose of applying theories to practice. I have consulted various published materials mainly books and journals. Online databases and electronic libraries are also consulted to contribute in the in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of childhood obesity and its interplay with marketing and advertising as well as other social factors. Keywords such as childhood obesity, advertisement, social factors and environmental factors are used. Thematic content analysis was conducted to identify similarities and differences of contents.

 

Results

            According to Nielsen (2009), childhood obesity is a serious health risk because it can lead to all sorts of problems. The problem is also growing: twice as many children aged 6 to 11 and thrice as many adolescents aged 12 to 19 are obese than children are about 20 years ago. Today, there are +8.3% increased numbers of obese children aged 6 to 11 and +10.5 aged 12 to 19 (refer to Figure 1). The statistics are based on scientific Body Mass Index Formula to measure obesity. Nielsen (2009) asserts that one of the reasons could be that children are practically inundated with television advertisements for unhealthy food. Based on the survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (n.d.), an average child aged 2 to 7 will see more than 4, 400 food advertisements per year, of which 34% are for candy and snacks and 10% for fast food.  

 

            Dietz and Gortmaker (1985) studied the television’s role in childhood obesity and discovered that each additional hour of television per day increased the prevalence of obesity by 2%. There are three ways by which television advertisement can affect children through squeezing out physical activity, increasing children’s desire for, and ultimately their consumption of, energy-dense snack foods and accompanying snacking leading to higher energy intake among children watching television. Klesges, Shelton and Klesge (1993) also noted that children’s metabolic rate was lower while watching television than while at rest. In particular, Borzecowzki and Robinson (2001) point out that advertising affects food preferences even of children as young as two. We should also take note that food advertising is increasingly regulated on children’s programming. The paradox, however, is that children are watching adult programming on television and are thus being exposed to the same advertisements as the general population (Anderson and Butcher, 2006).    

 

            Smith (2007) noted that because the child(ren)/young person are found to be influential decision-makers, advertising and promotion typically targets this segment. Further, a powerful tool nowadays aside from advertisements is product placement. Okie (2005) made mention that this had been critical since foods that are increasingly marketed to children through strategic product placement which becomes part of the story or game has a pinch of truth in there and children were encouraged to try products sometimes without the knowledge of their parents.

 

On the other hand, there are also studies who found no direct correlation between childhood obesity and heavy marketing of fast-food outlets and energy-dense, micronutrient-poor foods and beverages. Nielsen Media Research (2004) showed between the two there is an inverse proportion, suggesting that there is no scientific evidence which demonstrate that advertising could impact incidence of obesity (refer to Figure 2). Evidently, childhood obesity is not influenced solely on advertisements but rather on the interconnection among the child and his/her immediate surrounding.

 

Nielsen (2009) contend that there is a select few that is caused by genetic whereby genes could affect a child’s metabolic rate, fat-storage hormones and blood-glucose metabolism. As instinctual as it is, a human is genetically programmed to gain weight when food intake is plentiful hence we should consider more environmental causes. Mayoclinic.com listed factors contributing to excessive weight. Some of these factors are: diet or the habitual consumption of high calorie foods, inactivity, psychological factors and family/social factors. Moreover, the Department of Biobehavioral Health outlines behavioural reasons for obesity such as dietary intake, sedentary behaviours and physical activity (refer to Figure 3). Snacking which is packed with energy-dense, micronutrient-poor foods and beverages, for instance, equals to one full meal everyday. Because of computers, television and video games, children spends less time engaged in physical activities.  

 

            Moreover, the role of the family is also regarded as a significant contributor wherein the activities of the parents are directly trickled down to the children (Figure 3). Parenting styles and family characteristics also contribute to acquiring excess weights. Several of these characteristics include foods available at home, nutritional knowledge, parents’ dietary intake, encouragement of activity, parents’ activity pattern, monitoring TV hours and parents’ weight status. As such, a family’s eating patterns could have major influences on whether a child maintains a healthy weight. The tendency is that overweight parents may be less concerned about their child also being overweight than other parents who have a healthy weight (Ratha, 2007).

 

In the broader context, community and other demographic factors are significant contributors as well. Some of these factors consist of ethnicity, school lunch programs, work demands, accessibility to recreational facilities, accessibility to convenience foods and restaurants, neighborhood safety, school PE programs and socioeconomic status (Figure 3). Hood (2005) claims that higher obesity rates are associated with socioeconomic status and limited access to healthy foods. Donahue, Grisso, Orleans and Paxson (2006) noted that various environmental factors contribute to higher obesity rates among disadvantaged and minority children. Low income and minority children watch more television than white, non-poor children thus exposed to many commercials for high-fat and high sugar foods. Neighborhoods where low-income and minority children live typically have more fast-food restaurants and fewer vendors of healthful foods than do wealthier neighborhoods. Likewise, children in low-income neighborhoods often face with several obstacles to physical activity such as unsafe streets, dilapidated parks, and lack of facilities.

 

More particularly, the dilemma of healthy eating is also existent in schools. Not only the ways of getting to schools are changed but also the school environment. In particular, the types of foods and beverages available at school have changed, as have physical education requirements. School vending machines dispense not only soft drinks, but also snacks, while school stores and snack bars also sell soft drinks and snacks (Anderson and Butcher, 2006). Further, school cafeterias also sell these products a la carte have speculated that these changes in the school environment may have contributed to the increase in childhood overweight and obesity, though relatively few serious studies have been undertaken (Carter, 2002).

 

Anderson and Butcher (2006) also emphasize that physical activities are sacrificed to make room for more academics. Centers for Disease Control (2004) stress that trend for daily PE attendance is downward (refer to Figure 4). More and more schools are cutting physical education with only 55.7 percent of high school students were enrolled in a PE class, with female students and students in higher grades more likely to not be involved in the recommended amount of physical activity (Nielsen, 2009). CDC also discovered that despite the presence of Guidelines for School and Community Programs to Promote Lifelong Physical Activity among Young People, a program which recommended daily PE for high school students, only 5.8 percent of high schools require daily physical education for all students throughout the year (as cited in Nielsen, 2009). Further, there is also a significant drop in unstructured outdoor activities perhaps because of increase homework loads (MacPherson, 2005).

 

Discussion

Television is treated as the most powerful medium of communication hence TV is used by the food marketers to introduce, promote and advertise their products on child(ren)/young person. Advertisements to children have negative social consequences as commercials encourage gullible children to consume junk food which create obese, unhealthy younger generation. This exploitative advertising also brainwashes children into becoming eager consumers given that commercials are enticing them to be materialistic so that they could associate happiness with purchasing power and the possession of particular goods. Hence, the consequences the advertisement will imply for children consumption. Advertisements that present products to children as must have is also socially divisive especially when they see certain people using, eating and drinking such products on TV, films, videos and others.

 

Direct advertising is the technique mainly used wherein food products, even those which do not contain minimum nutritional value is being sold. It would be difficult to assess then whether a marketing strategy is a normal and ethical marketing practice. One way to determine would be the type of food offered for public consumption that is having its negative impact on the society. Food marketing could be regarded as unethical if they lure and tempt child(ren)/young person by means of attractive offers and promotions who are unaware or limitedly aware of the consequences. Promotional themes which exploit the credulity of this segment and are harmful to their physical, mental or moral health are also considered as unethical (Smith, 2007).

 

Specifically, product placement implicates excessive viewership especially for the young audiences who are otherwise have limited facilities to process what they can see or witness on televisions, stating that product placements viewed by children are no different from ordinary advertising (Ethical Corporation, 2005). Without the presence of the parents also during conversation or the actual integration of the products as viewed by the children, this could lead to misleading or deceiving children, misinform them and may not contain any information regarding the nutritional value of the product; the last being particularly true through product placement. This leads to conveying the message that those foods as seen on TV in the hand of characters with age same as theirs are encouraging children to the view that what’s good to eat is “good for them”; children are susceptible to advertisements, intentionally or otherwise (McNeal, 1992).

 

Childhood obesity as a social problem, on the other hand, can be considered as a product of poor role performance in the family. Childhood obesity occurs when the parents perform their role inside the family poorly. It is a well-accepted idea that the dietary practices of parents have a profound influence on the eating behavior of their children. As children grow, they learn to prefer some foods to others. This might happen because of the types of food that their parents offer them, which in turn might depend on the parent’s food preferences. Children having one parent who habitually ate foods with high total fat content were likely twice as likely to eat similar foods that were children whose parents had low total fat intakes (Oliveria, Ellison and Moore, 1992). Childhood obesity is caused by developing dysfunctional behaviours from a society that promotes excessive food intake and discourages physical activity (Dalton, 2004).

 

Children with two obese parents are more than six times as likely to become obese than children with non-obese parents. Children raised in families who do not regularly prepare and eat family meals together are more likely to be overweight. Children whose parents exert an excessive degree of control over what and how much their children eat are more likely to be able to regulate their food in a healthy manner. Children are more likely to be overweight if they lack opportunities to participate in active recreation and sports and/or not encouraged to engage in physical play. Children who spend several hours daily watching television, playing video games, or working on the computer are at a greater risk for weight gain. Poverty and low education are predictors of obesity. The lower the family income, the greater the likelihood of being overweight (Dalton, 2004, p. 54).

 

Calorie-dense convenience foods and beverages were both increasingly available to children at school and increasingly advertised to children. Children consumed more of these products that is why they became obese. School policy changes also contributed to reducing children’s activity levels in addition to making playing more difficult for children to engage in safe, unsupervised physical activity because of lack of facilities. Finally, children spent more time in such sedentary activities as watching television, playing video games, and using computers.

 

Conclusion

            Therefore, the reasons for childhood obesity are a multifaceted phenomenon and whether which between marketing and advertising and social elements is the greater contributor is unknown. One thing is clear, however, childhood obesity is caused by developing dysfunctional behaviours from a society that promotes excessive food intake and discourages physical activity. Taken together, the discussion proved that there is no single critical cause of the increase in childhood obesity. Rather, there are many contributing factors to such. Drawing away from the blame game, we should take note that the prevention and mitigating risks should be then taken from a holistic concept.  

 

References

 

Anderson, P and Butcher, K 2006, ‘Childhood Obesity: Trends and Potential Causes’, The Future of Children, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 19-20.

 

Borzekowski, D L G and Robinson, T N 2001, ‘The 30-Second Effect: An Experiment Revealing the Impact of Television Commercials on Food Preferences of Preschoolers,’ Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol. 101, pp. 42-46.

 

Carter, R C 2002, ‘The Impact of Public Schools on Childhood Obesity,’ Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 17, p. 2180.

 

Centers for Disease Control, 2004, ‘Participation in High School Physical Education-United States, 1991-2003,’ Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 53, pp. 844-47.

 

Dalton, S 2004, Our Overweight Children: What Parents, Schools, and  Communities Can Do to Control the Fatness Epidemic, University of California Press.

 

Department of Biobehavioral Health, Contextual Influences on the Development of Childhood Obesity, retrieved on 31 March 2009, from http://bbh.hhdev.psu.edu/lab/FCHL/index.html.

 

Dietz, W H and Gortmaker, S L 1985, ‘Do We Fatten Our Children at the Television Set? Obesity and Television Viewing in Children and Adolescents,’ Pediatrics, vol. 75, pp. 807-812.

 

Donahue, E, Grisso, J A. Orleans, T and Paxson, C 2006, ‘Introducing the Issue,’ The Future of Children, vol. 16, no. 1, p. 3+.

 

Hood, E 2005, ‘Sharing Solutions for Childhood Obesity,’ Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 113, no. 8, p. 520+.

 

Kaiser Family Foundation n.d., Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children, retrieved on 31 March 2009, from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7618.cfm.

 

Klesges, R C, Shelton, M L and Klesges, L M 1993, ‘Effects of Television on Metabolic Rate: Potential Implications for Childhood Obesity,’ Pediatrics, vol. 91, pp. 281-286.

 

MacPherson, K 2002, ‘Development Experts Say Children Suffer due to Lack of Unstructured Fun,’ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 1, retrieved on 13 March 2009, from www.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20021001childsplay1001fnp3.asp.

 

McNeal, J U 1992, Kids as Consumers, US.

 

Nielsen, D 2009, ‘How does childhood obesity work?’ How Stuff Works online, retrieved on 31 March 2009, from http://health.howstuffworks.com/childhood-obesity.htm/printable.

 

Nielsen Media Research, 2004, Childhood Obesity and Food Advertising in the UK: An inversely proportional trend

 

Okie, S 2005, Fed Up!: Winning the War Against Childhood Obesity, National Academies Press.

 

Oliveria, S A, Ellison, R C, and Moore L L 1992, ‘Parent-Child Relationships in

Nutrient Intake: The Framingham Children’s Study’, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 593–98.

 

Product placement – A new fight over an old tradition, 2005, Ethical Corporation, retrieved on 31 March 2009, from http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=3549.

 

Ratha, S 2007, Obesity in Children, retrieved on 31 March 2009, from http://physiotherapy.co.in/2008/07/17/obesity-in-children/.

 

Smith, A. (2007). “Food Marketing,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Appendix

 

 

Figure 1 Percentage of Children with BMI of 30 or Higher

(Source: Nielsen, 2009)

 

 

Figure 2 Childhood Obesity and Food Advertising in the UK: An inversely proportional trend

(Source: Nielsen Media Research, 2004)

 

 

Figure 3 Contextual Influences on the Development of Childhood Obesity

(Source: Department of Biobehavioral Health)

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4 Percentage of Schools that Require Physical Education, by Grade

(Source: Nielsen, 2009)

 

 

 

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