The modern fast food business constitutes highly competitive backgrounds. As much, any fast food matter corporation needs to establish competitive advantages to obtain a large industry contribution. The two main fast food companies that own the biggest market share are McDonald’s and Burger King. Other fast food companies such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Wendy ’ s and Subway each vie for larger market shares and high profits. The fast food industry has increased in popularity in China in recent years. The first fast food giant to enter China was KFC, and this was followed by McDonald’ s. These two companies own the greatest amount of outlets, though competition from other fast food companies is also increasing, such as Burger King, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks. They each have their own share of the market and their own way of attracting the attention from their customers, and market share is mainly defined by the food categories.
How much do these fast food companies spend for advertising to children in the United States? In 2009, “ The Fast food corporations expended around $4.2 billion in the fast food industry alone to market on television, the internet, social media sites, etc ” (Brownell, 2009). This amount of money shows that advertising to kids makes a lot of business for companies for these companies, but it also affects children directly because they get influenced to want to try it. The purpose of this essay is to convince legislators to consider banning the advertising of fast food to children under the age of 12 in children’ s programming. In this essay I will describe the meaning of fast food and the negative effects of advertising fast food to children under the age of 12.
McDonald’s constitutes by now as the most common restaurant in terms of fast-food sales. For the last five years, these Golden Arches have consistently shown further than $35 billion in sales across all of its franchises. The parent company itself only makes $21 billion in overall revenue, so system-wide sales is an important metric to consider when looking at fast-food revenue statistics. The second-largest fast-food chain by sales is Seattle’ s favorite coffee shop, Starbucks, but the parent company has made slightly more in reported revenue. I believe that the fast food companies are advertising greatly to children by the way they look and show their foods.
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Fast food chains consume a huge quantity of marketing to get the attention of children. People form their eating habits as kids then they attempt to encourage customers as children. It’s important that fast food companies know that their meals for children should be healthier. Parents think that chicken nugget meals are healthier than burger meals, but this is not true because they are fried. Hamburgers are now made in gigantic factories. At some point in time, hamburgers were made from beef from just one cow and they used to buy their meat from local suppliers so less cattle were used to get the meat. The fast food industries had such a need to for hamburger meat that would taste the same so they helped make factories to make ground beef. It’s all very scientific. Today a typical fast food hamburger has dozens or hundreds of strips of beef from different cattle, in different regions blended together which is not good for the people consuming it.
To get to my conclusion, television influences children’s eating habits. The downfall to that constitutes simply just that the amount of fast food commercials that play per hour is influencing the kids who watch them. This reveals them to food advertisements that contributes to develop poor eating habits that can set kids up for health problems as adults. “ We created a perfect storm between media use, junk and fast food advertising, and physical inactivity, ” says Dr. Victor Strasburger, professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He is 100 % correct. Well known fast food companies know the type of influence that they have on children simply through commercials. They all undoubtedly use this to their advantage. According to Strasburger, the average American child sees nearly 8,000 commercials on TV for food and drinks, and only 165 of these are for nutritious options like fruits and vegetables. “ Clearly eating behavior changes if you watch a lot of TV, ” (Strasburger).
References
- McDonald’s website
- Burger King website
- Wendy’s website
- Subway website
- Starbucks website
- Brownell, K. D. (2009). Fast food and obesity in children: What can we learn from the New England Journal of Medicine about corporate influence?”Article discussing the influence of fast food advertising on children.
- New Zealand Medical Journal. (2012).This research article examines the impact of advertising unhealthy food to children and offers suggestions for regulation.
- Roberts, S.B., et al. (2014).This study investigates the relationship between TV viewing and fast-food consumption among children.
