"The Ethics of Advertising Unhealthy Food to Children: A Study on Poten" by Riley M. O'Neal
 

Honors Theses

Date of Award

Spring 5-10-2025

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Public Policy Leadership

First Advisor

Kyle Fritz

Second Advisor

Melissa Bass

Third Advisor

Emmy Parkes

Relational Format

Thesis

Abstract

According to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, one in five children in America have obesity. Black and Hispanic children experience obesity at higher rates than children of other racial groups. With obesity rates increasing, what should be done to stop this increase? One partial solution is to restrict the advertisements of foods high in sugar fat, and/or refined grains directed towards children. Advertisements may be restricted in their mode (i.e., the media through which they are viewed) or their content (i.e., the substance of the advertisement or product packaging). While these restrictions on advertising may help lower overall obesity rates, there remains a question about whether different racial groups would plausibly benefit from these restrictions more than others. For example, if advertisements on television are restricted, and white children watch more television than children from minority groups, white children may benefit more from this type of mode restriction. When trying to lower obesity rates, justice demands that we not only lower overall rates, but lower rates in a way that benefits those who are least well off—in this case, Black and Hispanic children. Using John Rawls’ maximin principle, I study the habits of children in different racial groups and make inductive inferences about how effective certain types of mode or content restrictions on advertising might be at reducing obesity rates in those groups. I find that while both types of restrictions may be justified, restrictions on mode will plausibly have a greater impact on Black and Hispanic children, so mode restrictions should be prioritized

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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