(Food-Beverage-News.Com, July 07, 2013 ) Fort Wayne, IN -- According to a new study, fast food marketing to children is on the rise. The study was conducted at Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity in New Haven, Connecticut and the results were released Monday. The study leader and author of the report was Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Yale center.
The study looked at the twelve most popular restaurant chains and found that overall the foods that they are advertising are extremely unhealthy. Only twelve of over 3,000 kid’s meal combinations met the nutritional guidelines for preschool-aged children.
"The worst meal was at Dairy Queen," Harris said. "It was a cheeseburger, French fries, a sugar sweetened soft drink and a chocolate Dilly Bar, which totaled nine hundred and seventythree calories." Second on the list of high calorie kid’s meal combinations was Kentucky Fried Chicken with eight hundred and forty calories. The meal consisted of popcorn chicken, served with a biscuit, soda and a side of string cheese.
Twelve kid’s meal combinations also made the grade. Subway's "Veggie Delite" came in first place as Harris sees it. The sandwich is paired with apple slices and 100-percent juice; the meal totaled two hundred and eighty-five calories. Also weighing in at two hundred and eighty-five calories was the macaroni and cheese kid’s meal combination with apple slices and fat-free milk offered by Burger King.
Marketing
The study also looked at fast food advertising to children and found that the numbers were increasing. The average preschooler is seeing twenty-one percent more advertisements from fast food establishments than a preschooler of 2003. Of these children, African American preschoolers saw roughly fifty percent more ads than white preschoolers.
Fast food junkies are still in the making according to Harris. The study reports that, on a weekly basis, forty percent of preschool children ask to go to McDonalds and fifteen percent asked on a daily basis. Eighty-four percent of parents surveyed said they take their children to fast food establishments at least once a week.
Although healthy options were offered as well, Harris found, they were hard to find. "More than eighty percent of the time our mystery shoppers went into fast food restaurants, they were automatically given the French fries on the side," she retorted, "and more than half the time, they were automatically given a cup for soda. So, even though they have the healthy options, they aren't even asking people if they want them."
