More crap for kids!

So it turns out most kids prefer burgers from McDonald's bags than the same burgers in plain bags. By age 3. Are we surprised? I am kinda disgusted by the crap people feed their young children, especially here in Costa Rica. Costa Ricans love our their crappy fast food. I should take a photo of the mall's food court on a Saturday afternoon; you'd think it was Anywhere, U.S.A.

The same study shows: By age two, say the Stanford researchers, children can already form beliefs about brands, and advertising during children's television programming, or through other media accessed by youngsters, further solidifies their ability to distinguish brand names, logos and packaging.

I am happy to say that our 3-year-old has never eaten fast food. Unless you count a couple of subs from Quizno's. That's as fast food as we get. And we recently turned off the television during the day time, and small child only gets to watch movies at night. He's really digging Fantasia. The original, not so much the 2000 version. Loves the classical music. No commercials. Commercialism is really rampant down here. You might think it would be more -- I don't know -- rustic? Not. When you're an adult, you can just go, Eh, that's all crap and I know better. But:

"Children under the age of seven or eight really do not have the ability to understand the persuasive intent of advertising and marketing," says Dr. Thomas Robinson, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford University and lead author of the study, "so the justification for marketing, which is to inform a consumer, doesn't really hold for them, because they can't understand that advertising is biased."

Oh, I know, I'm preaching to the choir here.