My Library Adventure

While I was at Cooper I decided to find some print sources that will be beneficial to my research on childhood obesity and how it is affected by fast food advertising.  I searched on the library website to find some print sources and I came across a few books, and one government document.  The books I found include  edited by David Crawford and Robert W. Jeffery, Obesity edited by Elliott M. Blass, and Food edited by Jan Grover.  The government document is in two parts, and entitled Childhood Obesity: The Declining Healthy of America's Next Generation - Part I and Part II.  The book entitled Food does not include a lot of information in it about childhood obesity, although Chapter 3 is titled "Are Fast and Snack Foods responsible for Obesity Among Youth?".  Basically, this book will be beneficial in developing a counter argument to my belief because it has a brief section explaining why banning fast-food advertising would not reduce childhood obesity.  This book also explains how a child's mind works when it comes to food, which is really interesting.  I believe that this source will be beneficial to my overall research.  Obesity will give me a better understanding of obesity as a whole.  There is also a section in this book called "Environment Food Messages and Childhood Obesity" that provides statistics and factual information. While I was skimming this section I came across one statistic that both broke my heart and thoroughly surprised me.  It states that in the last three decades over/weight and obesity rates among United States children (ages 2 to 19) has increased from about 5% of all children in the 1970s to 35% for boys and 32% for girls in 2005.  That's insane!!  This is one of the reasons I want to write this paper - to gain a better understanding of childhood obesity and how and why it has increased so much in the past two to three decades.  In this section there is a subsection titled "The Marketing of Unhealthful Choices" which will be where I obtain information about fast food advertising, the marketing of it, and the like.  In the last print source I discovered (Obesity Prevention and Public Health) there is a brief section (pgs 237-239) about advertising and mass media and how youth are more susceptible to be influenced by the power of advertising.  This section will help me garner information about the topic, but will not be beneficial in specific information to my topic.  The government document that I found was a hearing before the Subcommittee on Children and Families.  The hearing was about examining childhood obesity, focusing on the declining health of America's next generation.  This document will be boring to read but will give me the government's standpoint on this topic and its plan of decreasing the number of obese children in the United States.  Overall, I had a very successful Coop experience today! Hoorah!