Fast-Food Chains Disproportionately Target Black Children
A new study finds that while most casual restaurants are in white neighborhoods, the ones in predominantly black neighborhoods are most likely to market to kids.
Anyone who's ever driven past the golden arches with a 5-year-old in the car knows that food advertising creates brand loyalty among even the youngest eaters. Most fast-food chains have child-oriented ads and meals. If parents regularly succumb to the ensuing pleas for french fries and chicken strips, it can affect the child's dietary preferences for years to come.
As I wrote Wednesday, taste preferences are an important contributor to adulthood obesity. Once the link between nuggets and nirvana solidifies in the brain, it can be hard to sever.
In an earlier conversation about food marketing, a New York blogger and activist named Migdalia Rivera told me that she was inspired to join a campaign to pressure McDonald's to stop promoting Ronald McDonald when her son was diagnosed with hypertension and high cholesterol at age 15.
"One of the difficulties I had was that near his school there were two McDonald's," she told me. "That was a habit he had to learn to break."

Prevalence of various forms of child-directed marketing at fast food restaurants. (AJPM)
Previous research has shown that fast food companies target young people living in lower- income communities and communities of color using price promotion and advertisements, and that lower-income and minority children are more likely to be targeted by food advertising, particularly for foods of lower nutritional value including fast food.