The effect of advertising is limited to unhealthy eating habits
Currently, the trend of advertising explosion seems more severe than ever, and more or less, ads have changed our life styles to some degree. So, that being the case, should we blame the gaining of unhealthy eating habit on ads? As far as I see, other factors might contribute more than ads did.
First and foremost, the modern fast life style, in my point of view, is the most important reason for the unhealthy eating habits. Like Chinese people sometimes say that "stomach is the reward for hard working". Why? For one thing, hardworking sometimes left people no time for eat; and for the other, extremely high pressure either makes you feel no appetite or lead you losing your ability to control your food intake. Unfortunately, both the excess amount of work and the exhaustive pressure are the results of industrialization, for each people in this society, that is to say a faster and faster life style. Take my sister for example, she works for a famous IT company in China, and often complains that she can only take one meal a day, otherwise she would failed to accomplish her endless work.
In the second place, people, especially females, are usually misled by the radical idea that the slender the better. Young girls often go crazy about calories-- there seems to be an adamant thought in their mind that if they failed to be slim enough to fit in a size 4 dress they would feel failed--with their whole life. As a result, being hungry but refusing food is very common among modern females. Being a young woman I myself, I have to concede that such pressure really exist my heart that sometimes I have to keep diet to lose some weight.
Moreover, in some cases, indulgence is a more significant reason leading to bad eating habits. This situation is quite common among Chinese young children. With extreme love, or say, cosset, for their children, Chinese parents would provide kids whatever they want, even children are asking for junk food. In this way, kids easily form a habit that instead of having meal at home in the proper meal time, children would ask to go to fast food restaurant for food. So, it is quite strange yet rather common to see this scene in most McDonald in China that full grandparents--who have already had their meals at home--waiting for their young grandson or granddaughter to finish their Big Mac.
In conclusion, the effect of advertising is limited and is not strong enough to influence people's eating habits. Therefor I do not regard it as the main reason for people's unhealthy eating habits. The modern unhealthy eating habit is a result of our modern life.
