Why are we failing our children?
Is it any wonder that Cancer is the chief killer of children? That at least 250,000 American children are afflicted with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and even more with paralytic polio, and leukemia's, juvenile arthritis, heart failures?
Why are we failing our children? Despite our affluence as a nation, and a scientific technology, we have reverted to the dark ages of human nutrition. And who is getting the full force of this? Our children. Let me site examples to you the how and why of what the food industry is doing to hook the children early, to insure their own future financial success.
Annually, American’s spend over $300 billion for food. The food industry spends $12 billion a year to advertise products and another $40 billion for colorful packaging. They don 't take full page ads for milk and eggs, or sponsor TV shows for fruits and vegetables. Such aren't high-profit items. No, the big money goes into things like Kool-Aid, soft drinks, sugared cereals, and processed snack foods. Their largest and most vulnerable audience is children. Target the children as soon as they are able to sit up before the television set. Bombard them with cartoons and commercials for sugary, chocolaty concoctions they'll nag parents to buy. Encourage them to be sugar junkies by the time they get to school.
For years many different groups have protested this insane practices but to no avail. Dentists, pediatricians, and parents most vigorously form coalitions to get changes made. The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, has himself said he's convinced something should be done. But so powerful is the food lobby and its lawyers, nothing but hand wringing and rhetoric follows.
"If the kids didn’t want it, we wouldn’t offer it." Therefore the companies responsible for this decay say they are just supplying the demand.
These people are using our airwaves to exploit our children for profit. Why should they not be required to prove the harmlessness of their activities? What we do know is that Americans as adults are not healthy, that they are dying in frightful numbers from a variety of degenerative diseases linked to a diet high in calories, high in sugar and fat, and low in fiber, fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The products advertised to kids on television are, precisely the kinds of products any responsible nutritionist would warn adults away from eating.
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