Healthy Eating Messages and Children Nutrition (Case Study) Essay

Healthy Eating Messages and Children Nutrition (Case Study) - Essay Example As Gorn et al. (1982, 200) found ‘television advertising for children is developed from direct testing and observation of the child audience; Children are subjected to research techniques developed for the study of child psychology to determine the most effective way of inducing their counterparts in the nationwide audience to demand advertised products’. Under this intensive observation, the advertising addressed to children manages to achieve the target set by the multinational corporations, i.e. the ‘cultivation’ of specific nutritional preferences to children of all ages in accordance with the production line of these firms. In the same context, Smitt et al. (2007, 57) stated that ‘the issues of food advertisements, especially aimed at children, and food labeling are factors behind the obesity epidemic which need to be tackled while commercial communication increases consumer information; however, the promotion of unhealthy foods negatively impacts the health of the population and for this reason actions need to be taken to protect children from commercial activity in this field’. The above assumptions are in accordance with the findings of WHO in 2003 which indicate that ‘dietary adjustments may not only influence present health, but may determine whether or not an individual will develop such diseases as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes much later in life’ (WHO, 2003, 2). In fact it has been found that wrong nutritional ‘habits’ can lead to severe consequences for the health not only in adults but also in children. More specifically, a research made by the World Health Organization in 2003 showed that ‘higher blood pressure in childhood (in combination with other risk factors) causes target organ and anatomical changes that are associated with cardiovascular risk, including reduction in artery elasticity, increased ventricular size and mass, haemodynamic increase in