Peddling Fast Food to Kids

Fast food marketing is everywhere in a child’s life. The goal?  Hook our kids on name brands, making loyal customers for life.

Children’s television is saturated with ads for fast food products, so it’s no wonder children consume about 167 extra calories for every hour of TV that they watch.[1]  Learn more about how television influences our kids’ food choices in ways that can be devastating to their health.

How are parents supposed to feed their children well, when one out of every five public schools in the United States sells them branded fast food for lunch?

Fast food giants have sold their junk food in our children’s schools since the first McDonald’s opened up in a high school in Benton, Arkansas in 1976.[2]

Fast food advertisers work hard to hook our kids on their products in increasingly sophisticated ways, including intricate "advergames" online, toys based on fast food chains, and promoting unhealthy kids' meals using children's most beloved cartoon characters like Shrek.

Fast food giants spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on direct advertising, but that’s child's play compared to new marketing strategies.  From the internet to the toy store, children are the constant targets of the industry’s most insidious advertising.