Christmas: Katamari Damacy Style
Created by Flickr user szy, this awesome creation displays a Katamari-styled Christmas tree. For more photos, click here.
Merry Christmas!
(via: Technabob)
Sugar chubby kids 1
Sugary, Chubby Kids
Everyone loves to eat food. This is the problem with children these days since they continue to get unhealthier with the food they eat. The food industry has grown very fast during the past years because of fast food and processed food allowing people to get food quickly. This has caused children to become obese and diabetic. Processed food has caused children to become unhealthier because of their harmful ingredients. In conjunction with advertising, and accessibility children have increasingly harmed their health.
Most of the foods that children love to eat have very unhealthy ingredients in them. Many cereals contain high fructose corn syrup which is sweeter than regular sugar. Not only do foods contain more sugar in them but the also have salt. Since children are eating more junk food they are getting high blood pressure from the salt. TFT Antonios from the department of Pharmacology at St. George’s Hospital Medical School in London says that increased amounts of salt have been linked to stomach cancer, asthma, osteoporosis and bone demineralization. Not only do foods contain lot of sugars and salts, but foods containing preservatives also have adverse side effects.
Preservatives are a common ingredient in many processed foods. A common preservative in a lot of foods are sulphiting agents like potassium or sodium sulphite. In ancient times the Greeks used them to fumigate there houses and the roman used it to sanitize their wine vases. This shows that some preservatives are dangerous chemicals that were potentially used for killing vermin and bacteria. However preservatives allow people to eat any fruit or vegetable no matter what season. They also allow us to eat food that is shipped from faraway places. Nevertheless the price is steep because children and adults alike can risk their health. Some children are even allergic to preservatives which Dr. Hassen Valley of the National Centre for Epidemiology says can cause severe asthmatic attacks (1647). The one thing to mention is in 1999 the FDA recalled 93 different food products because they contained a large amount of sulphite that could potentially hurt someone who was allergic (Valley 1646). The foods that contain high amount of sugar salt and preservatives wouldn’t be bad if the advertisement were not focused on getting children to buy them.
There are hundreds of advertisements on television and the internet specifically aimed at getting children to buy their product. Now children’s channels like Disney send them to the internet to see more advertisement on their web page. For instance, after many children’s shows the channel advertises that they to go play game featuring the cartoon that children was watching. This allows children to see double the advertisements that they would have seen if they had just watched television and thus introduces them to more advertisement involving junk food and fast food. Another ploy by the advertisement to get children to buy their produce is licensed characters.
For example, cartoon characters such as Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam appeal to children because they’re colorful and funny. Cartoon characters on junk food packaging also affects whether that child will like it more and want to buy it more. Dr. Kelly Brownell of Pediatrics at Yale University has studied the effects of licensed characters such as Dora and Shrek to see if children really like the snack more if it has that certain character on the package. Brownell has found that children like snacks that have a licensed character on it significantly more. However this can be used on both junk food and healthy snacks. Such as, when Sesame Street partnered with Apple and Eve, a fruit juice company that promoted healthy eating, but the results were not as positive as licensed characters that were put on junk food. Not only are licensed characters being advertised on packaging, but many fast food chains appeal to children by placing toys in their meals. Children already love to eat junk food with their favorite character on it now even worse food options such as McDonalds and Burger King entice them. Advertisement are everywhere especially on the internet and children are seeing advertisement for so many things. Children are barraged with advertisement every day and they generally ignore them, but since these junk foods are easily accessible they eat them more often.
Sugary Chubby Kids
Children have access to all sorts of unhealthy food in school, at home, down the street or at a vending machine. The problem is that instead of choosing a health fruit bar of just a fruit they get a candy bar or a soda. The positive thing here is that many schools are now trying to be health conscious and eliminating junk food from their menu. However, Sheila Fleischhacker, a law student at the Chicago School of Law, says that “competitive foods or foods of minimal nutritional value (FMNV)” are in 97 percent of middle schools and 95 percent of high schools (148). FMNV are foods that don’t contain necessary nutrients. Such as soda, gum, milk, licorice et cetera. This means that children are exposed to all sorts of potential foods that can lead to obesity and diabetes. With all these new technologies children are subject to more food related advertisements and thus they are manipulated to buy junk food.
People might say that parents are to blame for allowing their children to eat junk food or that they have not taught them to eat right. They might also say that children need to exercise more which is right. However exercise can only do so much because food is necessary for a child’s growth. They might also say that advertisements don’t have that great affect on children, but children are easily persuade to buy something that they think everyone else has or because they want to be “cool.” Others might say that it is the child’s choice to eat whatever they want. Nevertheless there is an increase in childhood obesity and there shouldn’t be an influx of future obese adults.
A child’s obesity is not caused by the child, but by the processed food that the child eats. The unhealthy ingredients in food cause the child to be diabetic and obese. The Advertisements barrage children with colorful appealing advertisements and make them want to buy their product. The access to the unhealthy food has led to a massive increase in type two diabetes. If children were to just exercise and eat right this could all just go away, but nothing is ever that simple.
This picture shows how obese children are becoming a big problem and their parents are allowing them to eat junk food.
