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Childhood Obesity and Fast Food Advertisements

Andie Passi
UWRT1103
Prof. Campbell
11 March 2015

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Source #1: Reliable Website

"The Impact of Food Advertising on Childhood Obesity." Http://www.apa.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 04
Mar. 2015. <http://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food.aspx>.
This is a website posted by the American Psychological Association discussing childhood
obesity as well as the impact fast food advertising has on obesity. The main points of this article
were that childhood obesity has been on a steady increase, it has become a serious problem, and
there are a variety of factors people need to consider when deciding the causes of obesity. This
article briefly discusses the effects television ads, internet media, and in-school advertisements
have on obesity and the correlation between those ads and the rise in childhood obesity over the
years. As the author discusses the topic, he is unbiased to a degree. He uses a lot of different facts
that support his argument rather than just stating what he believes to be true. In addition, he provides charts and statistics that further back up his research. It is clear that the author does lean
towards the argument that advertising does have an impact on obesity, but he does a pretty good
job of sticking strictly to the information rather than emphasizing his own personal opinion. In
addition, I also though there was good organization throughout. The website was easy to navigate, including tabs showing what each section included. Also, under each tab the author included a list of bullet points with the information he found. I think this is a smart way of listing information because a lot of times it is easy to wander off when information is just shown in large
paragraphs. Although I thought the author did a good job of portraying factual information, I do
believe he could have added more information. It took me a total of two minutes to read through
the entire length of the whole article. This is a topic that has been well talked about and researched so I do believe it would be possible for the author to have included more information

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which could potentially make his argument stronger. I do believe this was a useful website. Despite the things I thought it lacked, I do think it had a lot of credible information. The graphs
helped to visually understand what the author was talking about and the overall organization kept
me interested in learning what the author had to say. This website strengthened my opinion on
this topic and helped me learn more about what I have been researching. I do think I will use this
as a contribution to my project.

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Source #2: Developed Article from a Popular Source
"Experts Say Ads Make Kids Fat." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/
templates/story/story.php?storyId=123973489>.
This is a developed article from a popular source. The popular source is National Public
Radio which is very reliable and usually has very informative information. This article is a pointof-view article and NPR has a doctor and a teacher contributing to the topic. The main points
they cover are childhood obesity becoming a large issue, fast food advertising for children being
the next thing to be eliminated, schools needing to work on school lunches and vending machines, fast food restaurants needing to work on what they are selling and the nutritional value of
their food, and the fact that obesity has costed America over $150 billion dollars. The source also
covers what Michelle Obama is doing with her new program Lets Move in order to eliminate
childhood obesity. I would say that the overall feel of this news cast is not biased. The interviewer asks a doctor and a teacher a variety of questions that are unbiased and allows them to answer
based on what they believe. Although their responses are biased, the information they provide is
informative. Having a doctor involved in the discussion makes this source even more credible.

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This source is definitely reliable. NPR is known for informative discussions and knowledgable
individuals speaking on their radio station. Their intended audience is young to older adults but
is made available to anyone on 90.7 FM. This is one of the more credible sources I have found
since conducting research. Although the other articles Ive found have also been informative, this
one had a lengthy discussion, as well as a variety of sources to back up the argument. The interviewer asked many questions which also helped me expand my knowledge on the topic. Now I
feel as though I have other inquiry questions that I could add to my research. This is a very useful article and I am definitely going to use as a source for my project. Not only does it have a
large amount of information, but it also has credible people contributing to it which is very helpful in finding unbiased, informative information. As I was reading it, I started to feel more and
more strongly about the topic I originally chose and now I have many more reasons why I feel
the way I do about my topic.

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Source #3: The Opposing View Point
"A Ban on Junk Food Advertising Will Not Help Reduce Obesity in Kids." The Age. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015. <http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/a-ban-on-junk-food-advertis
ing-will-not-help-reduce-obesity-in-kids-20120205-1qwcg.html>.
This is an article from a known website that goes against the idea that fast food advertising needs to be eliminated for children. This article focuses on how banning fast food advertising
will not eliminate the issue of obesity. The author talks about instead of banning these ads, companies should start coming up with other ads that focus on encouraging children to exercise. In
addition, he says that there also need to be websites teaching parents how to make right eating

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choices for their children. His main point is that parents have the overall responsibility when it
comes to grocery shopping and they have equal responsibility for their children becoming obese.
They allow their children to consume what they purchase, therefore, they should be taught how
to make healthy decisions for their children as well as become educated on how to do this. Banning fast food advertisements will only promote economic inequalities and cause more problems between manufacturers and suppliers. The author is definitely biased when speaking on this
topic. Very rarely does he use factual information to back up his argument. Instead, the majority
of this article is him speaking on what he believes to be true. Although I do think he could have
included more charts, graphs, and statistics, he does have a variety of sources he contributed to
his article. The author focuses his argument on the fact that parents and adults need to be changing instead of the media. Since the article is based on parent decisions, it seems that the intended
audience is adults and parents who have children. Although lacking a good bit of factual information, I still think of this article as useful. I think the author has some valid points that made me
understand his point of view better than I did before knowing the con side of the argument. It
might be difficult to include a good majority of this in my project however, it opened my mind
up to other solutions to childhood obesity. For instance, having parents play a bigger role in the
issue since they are the ones allowing their children to consume the food they are consuming.
Even though it did seem like the author had some good points, after reading it I am still firm on
my belief that childhood obesity is linked to fast food advertising and that it still needs to be
eliminated.

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Source #4: Academic Journal

McClure, A.C, S.E Tanski, D Gilbert-Diamond, A.M Adachi-Mejia, Z Li, Z Li, and J.D
Sargent. "Receptivity to Television Fast-Food Restaurant Marketing and Obesity Among
U.s. Youth." American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 45.5 (2013): 560-568. Print.
This article is a peer reviewed journal. The authors point of view is for the same argument as mine. He states that fast food advertisements need to be banned in order to combat
childhood obesity. This article is loaded with information from statistics to charts to different
graphic organizers. The author focuses on the informative part of the topic rather than his opinion. He speaks about the numerous amount of television advertisements for fast food restaurants
and the correlation they have with obesity. The author also touches on BMI and what the CDC
characterizes as obese. Overall, the main point of this article is that there is a lot data which
shows that with the increased amount of television and television advertisements comes a noticeable increase in the amount of obese children in America. The author is surprisingly unbiased in
this article. Rather than expressing his beliefs throughout, I found that he was more focused on
the facts. Following the lengthy article was also a list of a variety of sources that seem very reliable. This tells me that this source is pretty credible. As for my project, I found the information
located in the various charts very helpful. The charts are, for the most part, easy to understand
and include quality information. On the other hand, I thought the actually written part was very
confusing and very hard to keep up with. The author uses a lot of words unfamiliar to most people and writes the article strictly with just information. This makes it very difficult to keep up
with and stay entertained by. I found myself dozing off, unable to remember what I was actually
learning about throughout the article. The purpose of this article was definitely academic and I

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believe the author did a thorough job of sticking to that and leaving the bias out of it. I do think I
could use parts of this for my project. I would not necessarily use the written part of it but I do
find the charts and statistics to be very helpful to my research. Overall, this source was very useful. It strengthened my view on the topic in a different way than all my other sources.