Definitely not mutually exclusive! That's the beauty of business. When done right, you are doing good for your customers and yourself. In this case, I would hope that this cereal company (for example) would produce a product that is good for, and appealing to, their customers. That is a difficult balance nowadays, however, especially for children, where "healthly" foods aren't associated with "delicious" or "fun". Rather than marketing unhealthy foods in an attractive way to make up for the lack of (nutritional) value, why not market HEALTHY foods as though they weren't, that is, "SMILEY BREAD! The most fun you can have with your toast." Not a good example but you get my point.
The problem is, kids just find piles of sugar in their milk for breakfast too appealing, and their parents don't want to deal with the screaming and crying that results from "No, we're getting bran flakes".
Given a choice between doing what's right and doing what will grow profits, I know what I choose, every time: Doing that which is right and which grows profits. They're not mutually exclusive.
This entire issue boils down to whether or not these companies want to "Do what's right" or do what will grow their profits. The debate between doing what's best for your customer and doing what will increase your profits is becoming (or has been) a big issue for many industries, not just food manufacturing. Either we have to educate those that are targetted by these companies so their "socially irresponsible" marketing efforts are useless, or regulate their campaigns, essentially hold the consumers' hands. Personally, I would prefer to KNOW what I'm eating, washing my face with, or storing my food in won't harm me because I've been taught as such, not depend on some government body to tell me what's okay.
Possibly. I blame, in part, the FCC for the decline of Saturday Morning Cartoons (i.e., the educational programming requirements). Because teen shows don't have to be educational, everything went to teen programming.
In any case, I did watch a great deal of educational programming as a child, too. I think I got more useful education from TV as a child that I have retained with me and use to this day than I did in, say, four years of high school.
Great story! I wonder if we watched the same awesome Saturday morning cartoons. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children's well-being so teaching them moderation of food, computer and TV usage seems to be the logical choice. That's what we do with our children.
Although it may not be realistic, I think some kind of regulation (however it's defined) would be great. Let's look at the problem of obesity in our country and start kids out eating right.
Marketing unhealthy foods to kids should earn a Darwin Award nomination for all participants -- especially any parent involved in making the actual food purchase. (if killing yourself out of stupidity is eligible, killing your children must be worse, evolutionarily speaking.) The folks creating and distributing such materials also may deserve an indictment before the ICC.
(There is a Dunning-Kruger reference to be made, but it is beyond the scope of the poll.)
The only valid "regulatory" approach would be 1) double the price of all foods sold by any company that participates in such marketing, and 2) direct all those proceeds to a general public healthcare or health education fund. Reduce demand; recover costs.
People shoudn't want to make their kids unhealthy -- and no industry should profit from causing it -- but it's certainly unfair to make the rest of us pay to correct the problems later.
Yes, doesn't seem anything wrong -- if the child can understand and accept it -- with telling the child, "You can play on this site all you want, but I'm not buying any of the stuff it advertises, because..."
In fourth grade, my teacher had us measure how much TV we watched in a particular week and make a bar graph showing the results. I needed to tape a second sheet of graph paper to it to show the 7 1/2 hours I watched on Saturday. The teacher wrote, "Joseph, I'm shocked!"
That was back in the day of awesome Saturday Morning Cartoons.
When I was growing up, I had a tendency to ask my parents for a soda whenever we passed a vending machine. I maintain, however, that I almost ALWAYS wanted soda; seeing a vending machine just presented a good opportunity to get one.
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