SHOULD FAST FOOD ADVERTISING BE BANNED ON CHILDREN'S TELEVISION CHANNELS IN AUSTRALIA?IntroductionAs children mature into adulthood, they learn to make responsible choices about their lifestyle. Along with a sufficient amount of exercise, health authorities continually emphasize the importance of maintaining a balanced diet to lead a healthy lifestyle. Although the paths to a healthy lifestyle seem simple, educating children to be health conscious can be challenging, especially when their choices may be influenced by the environment in which they grow up. In modern society, television has played an important role in influencing the diet of young children. McDonald's, Domino's, and KFC are some of the largest fast food industries that extensively use television to communicate with their consumers. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, children aged 4 to 12 spent an average of approximately 9.3 hours watching children's television programs in 2013 (Cornish, 2014). Therefore, the use of children's television channels to advertise fast food has raised concerns about many health risks associated with these low-nutrient foods. In contrast, television is not the only technology through which children are exposed to media. As a result, large fast food companies along with other government officials believe that abolishing fast food advertising from children's television channels would not be an effective method of changing the public's eating behaviors. This report investigates whether fast food advertising should be banned on children's television channels in Australia. Definition of Fast Food There is a lot of ambiguity in the definition of fast food, as its definition differs depending on the focus of the issue. The investigation revolves around... half of the document... Council, 2010 Lack of evidence on obesity food taxes and advertising bans: report, Australian Government, accessed 28 June 2014, .14. Oommen, V 2008 Policies on Restricting Food Advertising During Children's Television Viewing Times: An International Perspective, Pdf, accessed 30 June 2014, .15. IMAGE 1, IMAGE 2, IMAGE 3 - Gillaspy, R 2014 Lipids Digestion and Absorption, Educational Portal, accessed 26 June 2014, .16. IMAGE 4 - Okazaki, N 2014 Digestive System, Weber State University, accessed June 26 2014, .