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Fast Food Effect on Chilren

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The Marketing for McDonalds happy meals aim toward the children, advertising the meal along with the must have toy of the month. This is having concerned parents lash out against the company, saying their advertising is making is hard to do their job on parenting their children if they have to push back against the relentless tide of marketing aimed for their children. My opinion on the way McDonalds markets their product towards children, is just a way for a company to advertise there product and make money. Just the same as saying when Dairy Queen advertises their ice cream that its making their kids want ice cream which leads to them being obese when really it’s their parenting skills that need to improve not the advertising from the company’s. The Author’s editorial “Not so happy meals” in the New York Times is not an effective essay due to the lack of support around their main point; which is the scrutiny over the advertising and the way the market to their children.
Though this may be an opinionated editorial on the way the author feels, I believe their argument could have been a lot stronger if they focused on the issue at hand instead of spending a good portion of their paper talking about what’s inside a happy meal. The nutrition side of the argument is obvious, that fast food restaurants standards don’t meet regulation for a Childs daily calorie intake. I believe by not focusing on the central argument they lose a lot of support. They argue that the marketing that McDonalds does with their children including that toy of the month is making it harder to say no to their children. Instead of focusing on the way they market to their children and the effects it’s causing on them as parents, they go the route of using common stats that often confuse people without reasoning and explanation for example “According to a recent consumer survey, 37 percent of kids rank McDonalds as the top fast-food restaurant. This is nearly four times as many as those

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