Starting Eary: Underage Consumers

It is really interesting that the purchasing power of children has increased so much in recent years. I can understand why advertisers try to take advantage of them, it is a very natural business thing to do. It just seems dangerous because kids have more power but are not necessarily educated properly about media and choices, making them easy targets for advertisers. The increase in "latch key kids", coupled with advertising and sedentary lifestyles is toxic. A lot of unhealthy things coming together at once to produce bad effects. I guess I just don't understand why parents are even letting their kids buy so much food, I suppose its hard to completely control your kids and I have no idea what parenting is like so I guess I don't really know. I just know from my childhood that my mom had most of the say in what we ate and thank god she was into being healthy. I remember begging for Lunchables because they were so taboo but I didn't get those except on special occasions. I guess it is really up to parents but parents are a hard population to control because you can't really go into a house and tell people's parents to make their kids eat healthy, especially if they don't themselves.

I think in this capitalistic, business oriented economy, it is going to be hard to effectively curb advertising to children. Thus, I think from a very young age, children need to be exposed to media influences in an educational manner and have to learn to analyze messages that they receive. I don't know exactly how effective this would be but I can imagine that children who often have to critically think about advertising will be much more critical when they see an ad.
A group in one of my classes, NUTR 611, discussed advertising to children. They noted that many of the ads they saw did not even show the product except for the very end. Most of the commercial showed children having fun or being with friends and being happy. Thus, those messages get linked to a product; this holds up with the research that Nestle discusses about sensual gratification being important to children.

I have to say I am pretty appalled by the counting books that Nestle discusses that endorse eating a lot of sugary products. Why can't the teachers have the children count baby carrots?
I am also intrigued by Channel One, I never have heard of this until I read this chapter. I don't remember seeing anything like this in school. It seems like such a horrible idea. One thing that definitely sticks out in my mind about my schooling is that in HS there were soft drink machines all over the school property and the lunches were really unhealthy, even though at the time I liked them. Also, the free or reduced lunch line was very separate from the a la carte line, which made it horribly awkward and obvious if you wanted to go to the cafeteria school lunch line (which I did because sometimes I wanted vegetables).

It is going to be difficult to help children be healthier if school and home do not match up in regards to healthy choices, which is more often than not the case.