Even the strictest, most well-intentioned parents can have a hard time limiting the junk foods their kids eat. They’re up against billions of dollars and decades of carefully researched marketing and product development. Researchers say the marketing is even worse in low-income communities and neighborhoods of color.
“The same black communities that suffer more from diet-related diseases, like heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, tend to consume more fast food,” said Dr. Jennifer Harris, the Director of Marketing Initiatives at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity.
In her research, Dr. Harris has found that individual fast food restaurants, including Popeye’s and Papa John’s, “definitely target that audience [African-Americans].” She said they do this, for instance, by purchasing ads on channels popular with black audiences like BET.
The numbers don’t lie.
The following music video really gets what it can be like to live the reality of what these studies are telling us.
