Preschool child is eating vegetables as her meal. (Photo : Twitter/Ag&Natural Resources)
Commercializing and marketing vegetables in TV, banners, and cartoons increase the likelihood of children to eat vegetables by almost 300%.
Nutritionists were alarmed by the universal fact that children, indeed, do not eat enough servings of vegetables needed for their proper, healthy growth. A study made by Pediatrics on using branded media to encourage children to try and eat vegetables had resulted to an astounding 239% increase among students who opted for the healthier choice for their lunch.
By making use of marketing techniques such as animated banners in which an assortment of vegetables were represented as good characters and TV commercials where vegetable characters were shown and portrayed as health educators, the witnessing child will be exposed early to the idea of having a nutritious diet by means of regular vegetable consumption.
With this in context, the nice representation of vegetables would also indirectly discourage children from consuming too much unhealthy food all the time. Exposing them to this method at a young age would also quite effectively eliminate the stigma associated with vegetables bearing bad taste, teaching children that it's quite important to have a proper diet.
Conversely, there has also been studies about its counterpart: pop stars marketing unhealthy food would also encourage children that it's perfectly fine to indulge in unhealthy habits without moderation. According to a health article in U.S. News, universally famous singers have a great amount of influence among children and teenagers, and the commercialization of soda and fast food only perpetuates the problem.
These beverage industries and enterprises spend a plethora of money each year on advertisements because they know that these commercial segments work. By marketing their products to the youth with pop stars, celebrities, renowned idols, or generally anyone who's idolized by children, they are convinced that they should emulate them and use the same products.
Ultimately, parents are also responsible for the nutritious diet of their children because they are mostly the ones providing the food and drink for them. But a shift in the current status quo of food and drink marketing would also definitely help solve the problem and be a major step towards its resolution.
