67-29 197st
Fresh Meadows, NY 11365
24 May 2011
Senator Patty Ritchie
Dulles State Office Building, Room 418
Watertown, NY 13601
Dear Senator Ritchie:
I am a college student in LaGuardia Community College, New York. I am writing you because of a very universal issue that happened on children has deeply touched my heart. In my childhood, the package of food is not as colorful as today’s. Yet back that time would also have cartoon characters in order to attract children. Nowadays almost every snack packages would covered by various of cartoon characters. I feel like it is quite a normal phenomenon, however, I recently noticed that there are some hidden problems for this issue. In David Orr’s report “Cartoon Characters Are Making Your Kids Fat” on the news web called “Change” he states that “The researchers found that an overwhelming majority of kids in the study — 85 percent — chose snacks with a cartoon character on the packaging over an identical snack with unadorned packaging”. The fact that these cute and attractive cartoon characters can in some way influent children’s choice toward food which might lead to unhealthy eating habits makes me pondering whether these lively appearance on package is good or not. Maybe neither you nor me cannot deeply understand this reality issue since we haven’t experienced by our own, but face to the more and more serious obesity rates of children, how can we not paying attention to it?
Once step into any grocery store, the most possible place where children would running to is snack shelf. And of course, since the biggest mart for snacks is always children, most snack companies like to corporate with cartoon companies then put their characters on the package to attract kids. However, the consequence for this could be negative towards children. In Arielle Levin Becker’s study “Kids Think Foods Labeled With Popular TV Cartoon Characters Taste Better” Christina Roberto, a graduate student at the Rudd Center and lead author of the study said that “To me, what this shows is that the influence of characters is really so powerful, they're powerful enough to actually have kids think that the food tastes better and that they want to choose it for snacks". Cartoon characters influent children’s choice which will encourage them to get more snacks since they like the characters, yet by doing this, they will also get more weight virtually. Adult can figure whether one food tastes better than another by “really” taste it, but from children’s aspects, all they think is that they like some certain cartoons, thus, what they most likely to figure the concept “better” is their preference appearance.
After buying some “pretty looking” snacks, what would you think kids would likely to do? Combining with my personal experiences, I can really understand how kids will get bad eating habits by having bunch of snacks before meals. If you have ever had a kid in your family, maybe you could possibly find out that kids can really having snacks instead of their formal meals. Proper amount of snack won’t bring bad effect, but, they are children, how would we expect them have enough ability to consider the consequence of eating excessive snacks? Once a bad eating habit has been developed, it’s hard to alter. Nevertheless, obesity is not the only consequence brought by bad eating habit, but also might lead to anorexia.
According to every articles or reports I have ever read, I found a “funny” similarity, that is, all the packages which have cartoon characters laying on would work out only if they advertised on junk food, but for those that contain healthy food would certainly not work out efficiency. “Using the power of cartoon characters for good--to market healthy foods--may be less effective than restrictions on junk-food marketing”, says Roberto in Sarah Klein’s study “Cartoon Characters Attract Kids to Junk Food” in “CNN Health”. The use of characters to brand healthy foods might not be and effective strategy because whatever on that package, there is always a concept inside children’s mind—healthy food won’t taste better than snacks, or, in other words, junk food. After knowing this matter of fact, would you feel sad about the reality? For me, definitely, yes.
In my opinion, set a limit for snack companies to get access putting cartoon characters on package would be feasible. The cartoon companies shouldn’t indulge junk food companies to label their characters on the package only for their business profit but ignore the serious outcome it would bring to children. Kids are innocent, they shouldn’t be the victim of companies’ revolution of profit ambition. What if the kids involved in this revolution are the persons you care about? Do you willing to see they are getting health problems just by eating the pretty covered “devil”? I think nobody want to see this sadly result.
I hearty hope you can pay attention to the issue I stated and take a deeper pondering of it. Please fight for our younger generations, do not let their favorite cartoon characters lead them to an unhealthy condition. I would love to see our children can grow up happily and healthily. Thank you for your time; I know how valuable it is.
Sincerely,
Huining Chen
Becker, Arielle Levin. “Study: Kids Think Foods Labeled With Popular TV Cartoon Characters Taste Better.” Courant.com.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-cartoon-food-marketing-0621-20100621,0,2776506.story. [Web.] 21 June 2010
Klein, Sarah. “Study: Cartoon characters attract kids to junk food.” CNN.com.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/21/cartoon.characters.junk.food/index.html. [Web.] 21 June 2010
Orr, David. “Cartoon Characters Are Making Your Kids Fat.” News.change.org.
http://news.change.org/stories/cartoon-characters-are-making-your-kids-fat. [Web.] 23 June 2010
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