Wendy’s and the Warriors
In the ranking of child obesity by the OECD New Zealand has the third worst obesity rate in the world.
Yes, let it sink in.
Got it? Got it! Now that would be a huge problem for any country. Apparently, there has been a five year old kid in New Zealand just last week, who had to get some rotten teeth removed because of his drinking Powerade. We all know that stuff, right, you get it in any kind of neon colour, it looks basically like pure candy and you just know there has to be something wrong with it. Well there is and it’s extremely unhealthy, especially for kids. When asked why he would drink so much Powerade, the kids answer was ‘Because Richie does.’ He was referring to Richie Mccaw, a famous player of the NZ rugby team ‘All Blacks’. Twenty one rugby teams in NZ are sponsored by brands that produce unhealthy food. And if that was not bad enough (because it really doesn’t make any other sense to me than MONEY, having a sports team sponsored by KFC) the teams advertise those brands too!
New Zealands’ rugby team The Warriors. It’s not only a terrible commercial, but it’s also giving kids such wrong ideas about eating junk food. Those are grown men who practice a pretty strong type of sport. Not that the food wouldn’t be unhealthy for them but at least they won’t have such a high chance of gaining too much weight, like young kids do.
Now of course you could say that it’s not the players nor the junk food companies fault but rather the parents, who don’t teach their kids about healthy food and eating habits. Surely that’s a factor in the whole vicious circle. It’s mainly the parents who can actually influence their kids on what to eat. If I had a kid — and I know it always sounds terrible to parents when people who don’t have kids try to judge, BUT — if I had a kid I wouldn’t let him drink Powerade EVERDAY until his teeth rot just because he says ‘I wanna be like my rugby hero’. Parents sometimes have to say no! Otherwise it’s failing at parenthood, at least for me. Now of course the parents would not have to struggle with these kinds of things as much if there weren’t the damn commercials. It’s the same with the German commercial of freakin’ Heidi Klum eating a fat hamburger at McDonald’s.
Excuse my language, but WHAT?! That might be one of the most unlikely to ever happen in reality things I’ve ever seen. And it sheds such a wrong light on junk food, today’s society leads so many girls and boys to anorexia. There is so much junk food out there but everyone has to be skinny and good looking according to society and Instagram. It’s hard I’d say.
Sports teams should really stop making commercials for unhealthy food. Even if they get sponsored by the companies, they still shouldn’t advertise any of it. To me that’s wrong and they’re all lying. Of course some of them or some of us ‘normal’ people still sometimes can’t help to eat junk food but that’s still no reason to make a commercial for it. They should be rolemodels, and that is not the type of rolemodel I would want for my child.
