Essay 1

Kharielly Gonzalez April 28, 2010

Essay # 1 Eng 101



Companies should stop advertising junk food to children in schools because they are leading kids to an unhealthy lifestyle.

Selling junk food at school isn’t a good idea, especially when kids spend most of their day in school. Schools are not promoting a healthy lifestyle for kids by having vending machines full of junk food in them. Many schools should band bending machines at their schools and promote kids to living healthy by talking to them about the risks they face if they keep eating so much junk food. Schools should be a safe and healthy place for children’s. By banning bending machines schools are giving a positive statement in which they want children to be healthy when at school. Schools should have bending machines with healthy snacks in them such as fruits and UN sugary drinks.

Kids should also do exercise while at school. Gym teachers should make working out fun for kids so kids can be motivated to do exercise and start getting into shape. Fast food advertising should without doubt be excluded from schools. The only reason why schools allow this type of advertising is because most advertising companies provide things to the school. W e aren’t realizing that advertisement has a huge impact on our children and most of the time even us there is something we have to do to protect our children’s health and one of them is banning junk food.

This problem has been taking place for a very long time. On April 22, 1999 the Daily News published an article named “Suit to trash junk food in schools”. The article mentioned that more than half of city schools illegally sell junk food to students; nutrition advocates charged the board of education in a lawsuit. It also mentioned that principals readily admitted that they sell candy from vending machines to raise money for sports and other extras cut from their budgets. Knowing that this is a problem that has been going on for a long time and hasn’t been able to stop is upsetting because in the long run our children are the ones that suffer.

Most advertising companies use cartoons to target kids. Having favorite cartoons such as SpongeBob, Dora the explorer and many other Nickelodeon and Disney cartoons placed on all these junk food lead kids to believe they are healthy or good because their favorite characters are on them. According to an article published on The New York Times in January 12, 2005, some countries have banned advertising and marketing food products to children, but there are no such federal restrictions n the United States.

The article mentions that marketing bombards children not only through television but also in schools, in movies, video games, websites, books, and even in textbooks. Because the government isn’t expected to ban it any time soon, the center for science in the public interest has turned to cajoling instead of demanding some changes. Some countries have imposed stricter nutritional standards. Other countries have gone further. Sweden, Norway, Austria and Luxembourg have all banned television advertising to children.

When I was a little girl and even sometimes at my age now I see a favorite character on something and I automatically want to buy it for me or even my younger siblings. I remember my 5 year old brother one day wanted this candy because it had spider man on it. Advertising this type of way to kids isn’t a good way to do it because advertising companies know that kids will persuade their parents to buy it for them.

One other thing that can be done in order to prevent kids from buying so much junk food in schools is allowing junk food to be sold only on lunch time not after or before lunch. By doing this schools are helping children to eat junk food in a moderate way, meaning not as much as they used to. Another thing we should be thinking about its how to decrease the number of advertising that is done in our children’s schools. In Your trusted friend by Eric Schlosser he mentions how the explosion in children’s advertising has occurred during the 1980s.

So the question is how can something like advertising that is so big not be allowed in public schools? The answer to that question is the principles and the board of education. They can find other ways to raise funds for the schools or to get equipments for their classes, football fields etc. By doing this they give a positive message they can allow other types of advertising in their schools but healthy ones.
The only reason to why fast food advertises to children is because they are easy to control. Children are at risk of getting diabetes because of all these junk foods. These types of advertisements don’t realize the damage they are causing to kids even their own ones all they care about is the money they are making due to all this advertisement.

We should do something about these advertising in schools. We have to start informing our kids when they are young that advertising is a fake way to persuade people to buying their products. Companies only do it for their benefit not for the benefits of others. Fast food advertising should definitely be banned from schools.