Junk food industry’s shameful targeting of Latino and Black youth

*Sugary drink companies spend $2 billion a year on youth marketing. Almost all have multicultural marketing departments. The incidence of Latino youth obesity is at an all-time high. The consequence isn’t hard to understand. VL

By Anne Lappé, Aljazeera America

One hundred and six million people tuned in to watch the Broncos take on the Seahawks in this year’s Super Bowl; almost as many saw the McDonald’s ad that ran during the game, featuring a dunk contest between basketball starsLeBron James and Dwight Howard. Using athletes to sell burgers — especially to reach a young audience — is nothing new. Neither is using black celebrities to target young people of color. (The LeBron James ad was itself a tacit nod to a McDonald’s ad that pitted Michael Jordan against Larry Bird back in 1993.)

What’s different today is that marketing by the junk food industry directed at African-American and Latino youth has increased in scope, scale and savvy. Americans may be increasingly aware of the health consequences of consuming fast food and sugary drinks, but target marketing is on the rise — and it’s everywhere: Not just on television but in classrooms, in neighborhoods, on social media. It happens in obvious ways, through big-budget TV ads, and in subtle ways, through peers enlisted as brand ambassadors. Referring to young people of color, Lori Dorfman, director of theBerkeley Media Studies Group, explained to me, “Marketing is integrated in all aspects of their lives.”

This is particularly alarming because young African Americans and Latinos are also experiencing diet-related disease at higher rates than their white peers.

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[Photo by Brady/Flickr]

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