Black and Hispanic Youth targeted with overwhelming amount of fast food advertising
A new report shows that African American and Latino youngsters are seeing a significant amount of ads from fast food marketers, and it's by design
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If you are young, Black and downing lots of fast food, you are behaving in just the way that fast food companies would like – that’s the take from a new report released Tuesday that shows the largest companies devoted nearly all of their marketing budgets toward drawing in African American and Hispanic youth consumers.
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In 2017, 86 percent of food advertising dollars went toward promoting fast food, candy, sugar-filled drinks and unhealthy snacks on Black-targeted TV programming. On Spanish-language television, such ads took up 82 percent of the spending on food ads. This information comes from the study entitled: “Increasing disparities in unhealthy food advertising targeted to Hispanic and Black youth.” The report was produced by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, at the University of Connecticut, the Council on Black Health at Dresel University, and Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio.
The trend is happening even as food companies focus more on producing healthier meals and snacks, the report’s lead author said in a statement.
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“Food companies have introduced healthier products and established corporate responsibility programs to support health and wellness among their customers, but this study shows that they continue to spend eight of 10 TV advertising dollars on fast food, candy, sugary drinks and unhealthy snacks, with even more advertising for these products targeted to Black and Hispanic youth,” Jennifer Harris, lead author and director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center, said.
Black television audiences as well as Black teens seem to be a particular focus of the food industry, according to the report.
Researchers discovered that food companies increased their spending on Black-targeted TV advertisement by 50 percent between 2013 and 2017 at the same time that their overall spending on TV advertising dropped by 4 percent, according to the report. When it came to Black teens, they saw twice as many ads for unhealthy foods compared to White teens in 2017, the report noted.
Adding salt to the wound is that more than 20 percent of Black youth and more than a quarter of Latino children suffer from obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What does not help is that poorer children tend to live in food deserts, where there are fewer grocery stores or opportunities to by fresh and healthy food, Christopher Bolling, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics section on obesity, told the Huffington Post.
“The (companies) get better return for their buck by advertising heavily in those areas as that’s where people live and are going to have access to those (unhealthy) foods,” he said.
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