The concerns surrounding the occurrence of overweight and obese children in developed countries is well known and well documented. Wealthy countries for some reason have this issue way more than other nations. There are a lot of factors which result in this inconsistency among nations, such as different health standards set by different governments, and the practices allowed to be followed on the food production level. But the cumulation of those factors can be narrowed down to a few causes, which affect the children way more than adults.
The main thing that the businesses need in today’s market is customer retention. And seeing the competition that exists, ir becomes more critical for the food industry to indulge into practices that make sure the customers keep on coming back repeatedly. The easiest way is to produce food which is more flavorful, but scientifically unhealthy. One such practice is to produce more salty and savory food. Doing so makes the customers crave more of this food, and thus the business achieves its goal of consumer retention. This practice affects the children more, as they are too young to differentiate between what is healthy and what is unhealthy. As long as it is available quickly and is tasty, they will crave more of it, thereby affecting their health and body, which is clearly reflected in them becoming overweight.
This leads to another cause of this problem, which is the easy accessibility of fast food. As children tend to be more impatient when they get hungry, the parents are often more attracted to quickly available food. It saves them time, and also satisfies the hungry children. it does not make that big of a difference in the first couple of times, but then the children become more attached to fast foods, which funnels down to them being unhealthy and overweight over time.
If these practices are changed and altered, keeping in mind the effects that it has on consumers, specially children, it will greatly improve the odds to beat the serious problem of more children being unhealthy and overweight.