Fast Food Foes

In the eyes of children, many popular fast food restaurants are fun, safe and magical getaways that only a child can appreciate. With their elaborate playgrounds, cheap price, kid satisfaction and great tasting meals, it’s no wonder why kids always drag back their parents to have that experience once again. It is seemingly harmless to take a child to a restaurant such as Burger King or Taco Bell in order to save money yet take time off parenting for half an hour but is this form of convenience really justify the need of a child in terms of health? Constant consumptions of these fast foods are what accelerate the ever growing rate of obesity in numbers that reach global proportions while crippling the health of our youth at the same time. Although signs of an abrupt end to this epidemic seem faint, parents should to raise the amount of awareness and regulate the amount of fast food their child eats to avoid the obesity, its consequences and the many health issues that fast food is known to bring along when eaten daily.

There is no denying the fact that child obesity is fueled by famous fast food chains. We see this everyday when we pass by a McDonalds or a Wendy’s and the first thing you see is fat kids munching away at a burger and fries. Although Americans have long been eating fast food since the early beginnings of the fast food era, the 1980’s, also known as the “decade of the child consumer”, was the stepping stone for kids to be caught up on eating these kinds of food for years to come (McNeal, 1992). As the years progressed, children, adolescents and adults as well have gotten much fatter than before because of the fast food industry. According to the testimony of Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “most recent data available from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2003 – 2006) show the prevalence of overweight among America’s youth to be 12.4 percent for 2-5 year olds, 17 percent for 6-11 year olds and 17.6 percent for 12-19 year olds.” (Childhood Obesity and the Impact of Food Marketing on Children, 2008).

There are many factors that cause obesity but it’s safe to say that junk food and fast food is at the center of being the main cause. Many parents are vaguely aware of the long term risks that can occur due to eating unhealthy foods such a Big Mac or Whopper. "Fast food consumption has been shown to increase calorie intake, promote weight and elevate risk for diabetes" says David Lugwig, (director of the obesity program for the Children Hospital of Boston). A study conducted by the Public Health Nutrition states that parents who buy their kids fast food dinners three times a week are those who have shown to have soda and chips always available at home. Our children will remain fat and ultimately suffer physically, mentally and emotionally if regulations are not set by parents because failure to do so will fail to decrease the rate of obesity and increase the chances of your child to suffer a heart attack, cardio vascular disease and many other medical issues of that nature.

Few fast food restaurants barely even provide their customers, let alone children, with a nutritious meal in their menus. According to the article, Study finds worst fast food meals for kids, author Rachaek Rettner states, “They (the researchers) also examined the calories, sugar, fat and sodium content of thousands of kids' meal combinations in 12 of the largest fast-food chains in the U.S. Out of the 3,039 possible combinations, only 12 met standards set by the Institute of Medicine for school lunches for preschoolers, and only 15 met the standards for older kids. Most meals also contained at least half of the maximum recommended daily amount of sodium.” It’s surprising that “All of the 15 healthiest meal combination's came from either Subway or Burger King, the study said. [But] The worst 21 combination's came from Taco Bell, Wendy's, McDonald's, Sonic, KFC, Burger King and Dairy Queen.” says Rettner. If popular fast food chains can merely meet the standards of school lunches for our kids then should our kids eating these highly unhealthy foods at all? Maybe parents should resort to giving their child the Subway Veggie Delite sandwich with wheat bread and no cheese, one of the healthiest meals on a fast food menu to drastically reduce the chances of obesity and any other health issue.

One of the more minor consequences of obesity is that most kids who are indeed fat will become very unhappy. A child is most likely to get picked on and made fun of viciously because of his/her weight which can cause that child to go through some form of depression, anger and have low self esteem. "For parents and pediatricians, one of the issues our study raises is that if you're caring for a child who's overweight, you need to be alert to this and you might want to gently bring it up with the child…” says Julie Lumeng, M.D., assistant research scientist, Center for Human Growth and Development. If parents were more considerate on what and how to feed their children more healthy meals instead of fast food dinners, then the kid would have not gotten picked on in the first place. There are incidents such as bullying that partially expose the after affects of obesity that are closely linked to mal nourishment but it’s only the half of what the real danger lays ahead for the future of the fat youth.

The very unhealthy fast foods are low in nutrients, fiber, vitamins, minerals, essential oils and high in saturated fats. Aside from the obvious factors that are known to cripple the health of our children, children can sometimes die due to contamination of E. coli O157:H7 in the beef of the undercooked hamburgers because of their vulnerability. In 1993, three kids all under the age of three died due to heart failure all because they ate a simple hamburger at a Jack in the Box. It is a completely horrible way to die because the victim can have severe stomach aches and have bloody diarrhea. The consequences of obesity and many other health issues that are incorporated with eating fast foods are unmatched to that of the ultimate consequence of eating these nasty contaminated foods that can kill you.

Efforts to precisely address the public on child obesity and the way our children eat have been made by the Centers for Disease Control. In 2004-2007 the CDC created the National Center for Health Marketing, to “revolutionize” the way parents received information on health issues and how to make healthy food decisions for their child, launched Fruits & Veggies — More Matters™, to influence kids on replacing hamburgers for fruits and vegetables, and partnered with many experts to conduct countless studies to accurately pin point how hard the fast food industry has impacted our kids and what can be done to put an end to it. The CDC is also responsible for providing funds to schools in 23 states that will put the money to use in building more gyms for the students to improve their physical activities, improve their nutrition in school cafeterias and to prevent the use of tobacco among students. It’s great to see that people are stepping up to this issue and trying to resolve it. The efforts can play a key role in saving many children and to keep them away from fatty, unhealthy foods. There’s no doubt that children are still going to be expose to fast food but with efforts such as the ones mentioned, it can really change the way our kids eat for the better.

It is definitely hard to get a child off McDonalds or Burger King due to the fact that most children are virtually born eating these foods and grow fond of them as they grow up. Most of the kids born around the 1980’s are who were sucked into the fast food industry’s children’s advertisement scheme and are now adults who are still loyal customers to their restaurant of choice. With more and more fast food chains opening up restaurants worldwide, completely keeping a kid away from them is completely impossible because sooner or later they will be old enough to make their own decision. Parents however feel the need to engage their children with the pastime of taking the whole family out to eat a hamburger with fries and a soda. All thanks to fast food, this is just another way of involving a child in the urban culture that is popular among kids.

Completely forbidding a child to eat fast food might be a bit too extreme of an action to take but significantly reducing the amount of how much they eat fast food can potentially save them from obesity, diabetes, heart failure and even death. Regulation of these foods, motivation to participate in physical activities and a better home cooked and takeout diet are the keys that will ensure that your child will remain healthy. With the lack of kids engaging themselves in any physical activity and staying at home all day watching TV, America already has the bad reputation of being the fattest country in the world. By monitoring children’s intake of fast food, hopefully we can do away with ourselves of that reputation.

Work Cited

“most recent data available from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2003 – 2006) show the prevalence of overweight among America’s youth to be 12.4 percent for 2-5 year olds, 17 percent for 6-11 year olds and 17.6 percent for 12-19 year olds.”

Childhood Obesity and the Impact of Food Marketing on Children (2008) (testimony of Julie L. Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H., Director). Print.

NHANES Survey

Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, McDowell MA, Tabak CJ, Flegal KM. Prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States, 1999--2004. JAMA 2006;295:1549--55.

Associations between parental report of the home food environment and adolescent intakes of fruits, vegetables and dairy foods.

Hanson NI, Neumark-Sztainer D, Eisenberg ME, Story M, Wall M. Public Health Nutr. 2005 Feb;8(1):77-85.

"Effects of fast-food consumption on energy intake and diet quality among children in a national household survey." Pediatrics 113.1 (2004): 112-118. E-Journals. EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2009.

Julie Lumeng, M.D., assistant research scientist, Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan, and assistant professor, pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor; Dana Rofey, Ph.D., assistant professor, Weight Management and Wellness Center, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh; June 2010, Pediatrics

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