How Many Parents Support Banning Junk Food

Controversial public views on banning junk food are in balance. That was revealed in the course of the survey, held from 8/25/14 to 12/16/14. Meetville (dating app to find the right person) posed the following question: “Should parents ban junk food from kids?”

Those polled numbered 74,933. From the USA - 88%, from Canada 2%, from Britain - 4%, Australia – 2% and other countries – 4%.

Healthy food definitely has positive effect on child’s life. Jamie Oliver, celebrity chef, states: “Kids are not born and programmed to pick up a nugget, or a burger. So it’s our job to make salads, salsas, veg appealing and gorgeous. If you can learn to cook you can save money and you will possibly put 11- 13 years on your children’s life. While councils still allow many, many junk food vendors to be outside schools we will have a problem. While sugar can get into so much things without being taxed, and that money being put back into food education, we will have a problem.”

Although there are obvious cons of junk food, some experts would let kids eat it from time to time. Charlotte Markey,a health psychology professor at Rutgers University, says: “I’m certainly not saying that we should load our kids up on junk food. But we don’t want to make it so off limits that it starts to have sort of a mystique or appeal.”

Junk food has no health benefits, though it may not be that dangerous for healthy children. Elisa Zied, a registered dietitian nutritionist, thinks: “No kid should have to feel guilt or shame when having a treat, especially if he or she is in good health and at a healthy body weight. Life is too short.”

Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, is sure that parents can teach their kids what food is good for their health, without banning it. The reason is that banning something usually have the opposite effect from what we expected. Everything what is prohibited becomes very desirable. It’s parents’ duty to explain all disadvantages of fast food.

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.