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From Tastes Great to Cool: Children's Food Marketing and the Rise of the Symbolic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Juliet B. Schor  and
Margaret Ford
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Extract

It is now well recognized that the United States is a consumer-driven society. Private consumption comprises a rising fraction of GDP, advertising is proliferating, and consumerism, as an ideology and set of values, is widespread. Not surprisingly, those developments are not confined to adults; they also characterize what some have called “the commercialization of childhood.” Children are more involved than ever in media, celebrity, shopping, brand names, and other consumer practices. At the core of this change is children's growing role as independent consumers. In recent years, children's access to income has risen markedly, and they have gone from being purchasers of cheap plastic goods and a few select food items (e.g., candy) to being a major market for a diverse set of goods and services, including foodstuffs. Unofficial estimates suggest that children aged four to twelve spent a reported $6.1 billion in purchases from their own money in 1989, $23.4 billion in 1997, and $30 billion in 2002, for a total increase of four hundred percent.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Spring 2007 , pp. 10 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2007

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