Childhood Obesity
Childhood obesity has become an issue of pandemic proportions in North America, and this issue can be connected to fast food restaurants, such as McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s. Although local burger restaurants could also partially be blamed for this predicament, the major fast food franchises should be held more responsible for childhood obesity than them. Childhood obesity has been linked to unhealthy eating outside the house, coming from fast food, but not just any fast food, more specifically, fast food from major companies such as McDonalds. This problem, obesity, can cause numerous dilemma for a child including physically, mentally, and emotionally. Obesity does not only affect children externally, but also internally…show more content… For example, they spend billions of dollars in advertising to capture and lure children to buy their food. Although people know that the food is unhealthy and unsafe, the pressure from children leads their parents to buy the food which they would otherwise not buy. Although this is a business strategy, it is unethical and the fast food franchises ought to take the blame for ends of their means. Articles, such as one from the Canadian Journal of Public Health have stated facts such as, “Children preferred the taste of foods wrapped in decorative wrappings, relying more on aesthetics than on familiar branding when making their choices.”. Research conducted by Charlene D. Elliott, Rebecca Carruthers Den Hoed, Martin J. Conlon, from the Canadian Journal of Public Health proved that “ Children preferred the taste of foods wrapped in decorative wrappings, relying more on aesthetics than on familiar branding when making their choices.”. Sixty five Preschool children aged 3 to 5 tasted five pairs of identical foods in packaging from McDonald’s and in matched packaging that was either plain, Starbucks-branded, or colourful (but unbranded). Children were asked if the foods tasted the same or if one tasted better. The result showed that the aesthetics and decoration used by McDonald’s, lead the children to believe that one of the food tastes better than the other one, which is…show more content… A statement from the McDonald's official website says, “McDonald's is the world's leading global food service retailer with over 36,000 locations serving approximately 69 million customers in over 100 countries each day.” from this information, it can be safely assumed that is people had a fast food franchise near them, it would most likely be McDonald’s. Other fast food giants, such as Wendy’s, have also stated “Today, there are more than 6,515 Wendy’s locations worldwide, 85 percent of them are franchises.” From the previous information, it is possible to deduce that local fast food restaurant play a very minor role in childhood obesity in comparison to fast food giants, which own thousands of of stores worldwide. That is another reason that fast food giants should be held more culpable for obesity in