FOOD ADVERTISING

Food Advertising



Food Advertising

Purpose of the Study

The main purpose of the study is to understand that whether advertising makes any effect in children's food choices.

Discussion

Television is a major part of young people's daily lives. Recent research suggests that in the UK children aged between six and 17 spend an average of about two and a half hours watching television almost every day (Livingstone and Bovill, 2009). Television's ubiquity leads us to suspect that it plays a significant role in everyone's lives and it seems reasonable to suspect that young people are especially vulnerable to its influence.

When it comes to issues such as food choice, we seem instinctively to feel that the role of advertising must be very significant. Surely, we tend to think, with all that viewing going on, television's messages are bound to have an influence on young people's behaviour? A glance at the TV schedules shows that there is a great deal on television that is about food (Tunstall 2003). In the summer 2009 schedules for a typical week, 12 programmes featuring food or cookery were listed. In the autumn when viewing figures rise there is often twice this number in the schedules. Over the year television transmits around 500 hours of programming whose main focus is food - and that is just on the five national terrestrial channels (Story 2000).

Yes, the advertising and education plays a very vital role in making the food choices. As we see that different commercials are so fascinating for children that they just go for that specific product. Similarly, if we talk about the role of education in children's choice of food, it is very obvious that education has a vital role in the children's choice of food (Morley 2002). Education gives children a proper guidance as which food is better for their health and which food is not good for their health. Education gives children a proper awareness of the good and bad effects of a specific food item. Children get a proper knowledge of the ingredients in any food item, and the advantages and the disadvantages of that specific ingredient. Thus, by knowing this it becomes very easy for children to make choices of food items. Let's take the example, education gives children an awareness that milk is very good for health, so if a child is educated and he understands the importance of milk for human health than he will definitely go for the food item which is made up of milk (Livingstone 2009).

Similarly, if we talk about the role of advertising in making the food items for children, we will find that it has a very strong effect. As, children gets fascinated by the way these products are projected in the item (Kaufman 2000).

One problem with the argument over television advertising for food is that, as in other areas of research on the influence of television, evidence for a clear causal relationship between what people see in television advertising and what they eat is actually ...