No. The initiative has to come from us . We must bring up our kids in such a way that they are not over exposed to FF . If we r not reponsibl abt our kids, how can v expect the FF owners to be ?

I think that you cannot put the blame in one corner solely. It is personal, community, government and business fault with this issue. Companies are made up of people, who make decisions for varied reasons, and as we are all human, there is much room for fault and improvement, I do not think the companies are a faceless monster trying to hurt people on purpose, I think it grew to be that way by people letting things slide in food companies where instead they should have said "we can't do that it is not ethical". Where the companise agressively market to kids (eg. happy meal with toys) this should be stopped, as kids cannot always determine when advertising is lying to them, and adults are very savvy at exploiting children this way. I think advertising of processed foods to children should be banned, as that means the government, community and business are working together to help the indivual.

It's not children who buy it because children do not have any money of their own. - it's adults who buy FF and give it to children. Nobody has a gun held to their head with the words "Buy a burger now or we'll blow your brains out!" It makes no difference whether it is advertised or not. What makes the difference is whether a parent says 'yes' or 'no' to the child who demands FF. My son doesn't keep on and on and on pestering for such things once he has been told 'no' because he knows there's no point - we won't suddenly give in if we don't think it's appropriate. People damage their own health because they choose to eat crap every single day - nobody forces them to do it - they choose to do it. Nobody is a victim because we all have the option of saying 'no' to FF as well as saying 'yes'.

so basically you are saying that we are all 'victims', the parents are the victims because the children make them by give them what they want - if they the parents do not comply the children will refuse to do things such as eat vegetables or go to bed on time. I thought that adults were in charge of children not vice versa. When the children reach adulthood they can decided for themselves and they DO have lots of choice. Processed food is NOT physically or mentally addictive and guess what? Pre-prepared, processed ready-meals are the more expensive optoon because somebody has done the cooking and preparation for you - all you have to do is decided whether to buy the product or not to buy it. Nobody can make you buy it and if you don't nobody has the power and authority to serve punishment upon you. YOu will not be greeted by armed police wearing riot gear at the checkout because you have two apples and an orange in your cart instead of s Pot Noodle. We choose what we want to eat - WE CHOOSE for ourselves. Every supermarket I have ever visited has sold fruit and vegetables. Equally they have all sold poultry and meat as individual items - they all sell meat products and ready meals that contain meat - in fact, we have a vast array or choice, loads of different products, some ready to eat while other come as a raw ingrediants which require preparation and cooking - If I choose things which are raw ingrediants I will have to do all the work myself before I eat it. So what do we have then? It would seem that we are faced with every available choice possible and all under one roof. Of course supernarkets have processed food along with healthy food - they have worked out you see, that not everybody wants to buy the same things - some like junk food while others do not. To make their money the supermnarket therefore wants to sell as much food as it can - the only way to do this is stock a wide range of products to appeal to as many consumer choices as possible. They do not however have the ability to control the consumer by force or any other method - they cannot frog-march a customer to the ice-cream and cake isle at gunpoint and make them buy a frozen cake. As for the portion sizes - come on! If I sell you a plate that holds 8 tonnes of fast-fries with tomato sauce dressing would you continue to eat them until you had none left even though there was simply too much food for a person to physically consume just because they were on the plate I gave to you? Does this not sound a bit odd to you? If the portion of chips on the plate was, in your opinion way too large for you to eat, would not simply eat some and leave the rest uneaten? Or would you continue to eat until you were ill and vomiting food back up because you believed it was somebody elses's job to tell you when to stop eating - all you have to do was shove it in your mouth listen for a voice saying 'stop eating NOW!' The marketing is not insideouse - it's the exact opposite. The food looks fantastically good in the adverts - adverts have one purpose only - to make you want to choose the product on offer - this does not happen by making a the product unappealing does it? There would be no point, nobody would want to buy it. Finally, salads. Do you really believe the following to be true: I purchase: 1 raw tomato, 1 raw carrot, 1 small lettuce, 1 raw egg, 2 small raw potatoes and a stick of celery which I later prepare to create myself a salad. The ingrediants listed contain the same anounts of sugar, fats and salt as a Big Mac from Macdonalds with large fries. The anwwer should be 'no' by the way. You and only you are responsible for what you put into your mouth. Advertisers can try to influence your deciion but THEY CANNOT IN ANY WAY MAKE THAT DECISION FOR YOU OR DESPITE YOU. It's no good crying that you weigh as much as a tank when it was your brain choosing to purchase food which you knew was going to make you fat but you still went ahead any got it and ate it anyway - and then you did it again and again. In fact, it's worse even than this - you are completely aware that you are getting fatter and fatter because this is a process that happens gradually, not overnight. You did not go to bed thin and wake to find yourself suddenly obese thinking 'wow, I didn't know that was going to happen last night'. No, what you actually did was give yourself permission to eat junk and get fat. Tell me again at which point did this become someone else's fault instead of your own? To clarify, if you choose food types that are high in fat, sugar, salt all because you like the taste and are too lazy to cook for yourself then YOU WILL GET FAT. You chose to damgage your own health so please do cry amd whine about how it's not your fault - whine, whine whine on and on on and - go eat a tub of ice-cream instead - at least we'll get 20 mins of peace while you eat it.

No. Everyone has the personal responsibility to research what is healthy and what is not and to make decisions based upon what they know. The restaurants all have the caloric and fat amounts of their meals available. All one has to do is ask for them. This is like saying Bakeries should be held accountable for selling sweet, delicious, fatty cakes and cookies. Or donut shops should be held accountable for their contribution to the fat world If you want good health then you need to be responsible for it and not be suckered in by advertisers wanting your dollar. Research food/products before you buy them and put them into your body. Caveat Emptor.

The other answers point out some obvious and reasonable answers to the first two questions. I won't repeat those answers. My two cents on the third question: Marketing to children is deplorable. It's true that adults have the ultimate decision in buying the product, but ask yourself one question: Why hasn't it stopped? Because it WORKS! Not only are kids going to influence their parents' spending power, but marketing to children gives you lifelong consumers. Why do you think Joe Camel was banned? I'm going to completely screw this fact up, so take it with a shaker of salt, but I vaguely remember reading that some European country prohibited child-marketed commercials being played before 9pm. Something to that effect, anyways.

yes

Not in the slightest, people today know what they are doing when they eat out. Only in america are companys held responsible when their consumers are too fat to find their wallet. Bastards.