Essay Outline

Outline:
Topic: Fast food industry taking kids as the “money maker” machine
(working) Thesis Statement: targeting kids as the junk food’s major consumer, as well as advertising these products in school lead them to have an unhealthy diet which causes many diseases.
Introduction: will be written last
Main Ideas:
1st paragraph: the fast industry targeted kids as their main costumers.
2nd paragraph: the fast food industry is advertising in public schools.
3rd paragraph: advertising in public schools lead children to have an unhealthy diet.
4th paragraph: kid’s diet is the main cause of obesity, type II diabetes and calcium related diseases.
Conclusion: will be written last
Body Paragraph 1:
Fast food restaurants use different marketing strategies to manipulate kids, whom are their main consumer. These restaurants create fantasy elements, promotional toys, playgrounds in their locations, and web site clubs to gather information about their favorite customers; before the marketers change kid’s behavior they have to know their wants. Fast food restaurants have access to kids 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through TV commercials, and internet. “a typical American child spend twenty-one hours watching TV ” and watches more than thirty thousand TV commercials per year. “A kid who loves our TV commercials, and brings her grandparents to a McDonald’s gives us two more customers”, explained Ray Kroc, owner of McDonalds. The strategy of these companies is to have the kids dream about a utopian place where everything is possible, where they want to belong to and to get their loyalty and trust. Eric Schlosser states in the chapter entitled “Your Trusted Friends” (42) that, children are more able to recognize a brand logo before they could even know their names. Kids are important customers for marketers because “they have more influence in their parent’s decision to buy the products that they want and also they are the adult’s consumer of the future”. Since 1980, when the explosion in children’s advertising occurred, kids are being targeted not only by fast food restaurants, but by phone companies, oil companies, foods and cleaning products, clothing stores, as well as soft drinks. These chains want to get access to kids, not only by TV or website clubs, but ultimately in schools.

Body Paragraph 2:
Public schools used to be a place that kept children from the advertising of junk food. But now, they have become the main spot for these companies to conduct economic interests. The fast food restaurants have different strategies to promote their products in schools and the most important thing, keep the brand image up, making the customers believe that they care about their education; “We value the importance of education and have a long-standing commitment to its support,” is a quote from McDonald’s scholarships webpage. One strategy is to supply technological materials for students; “the spiraling cost of textbooks has led thousands of American school district to use corporate-sponsored teaching materials”, states Eric Schlosser in the chapter “My Trusted Friends” (55). They have programs to help students financially; for instance, Coca-Cola first Generation Scholarship, which grant $ 5000 to Indian American Students who are in their first or second semester of college; Pizza Hut Reading contest, which give kids a free pizza if they reach a reading goal. Likewise, McDonalds also offered free food in schools. The Campaign for a commercial-free childhood: reclaiming childhood from corporate marketers, mentions that “Children in kindergarten through fifth-grade had been receiving their report cards in envelopes adorned with Ronald McDonald promising a free Happy Meal to students with good grades, behavior, or attendance”, this occurred in Seminole County Florida, but it ended when the parents started complaining about it. Moreover most fast food chains have posters in hallways and in School buses. “Corporate Accountability international: challenging abuse protecting people” states in its website (www.stopcorporateabuse.org) that “ 20 percent of public schools sell branded fast food and if a school doesn’t sell it, there will be a location nearby.”