Culinary applications or harmful to children's health

The Guardian Web site published a Tuesday commentary by Su Quinn (Sue Quinn). The authors believe that food-cooking apps that are loved by parents and children may harm children's health.

The following is an overview of the article:

A recent award for Dirtgirlworld applications has won the digital field. The app can be used on smartphones and tablets, mainly to teach children how to grow food and make it into tasty food. Although the program is beautifully designed and the information about food is very correct, it raises some of my concerns.

First, let's analyze the size of the market for children's applications. While this scale is hard to calculate, kids team, the agency responsible for child-spending surveys, surveyed 2,200 parents in the UK and the United States, who each year downloaded an average of 27 applications for their children. Nearly 30% (28%) 5-15-year-old people have smartphones, according to Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator. In addition, 14% of the population has a tablet computer. Another survey showed that the proportion of preschoolers using smartphones (26%) was twice times more likely to tie their shoelaces (11%). No wonder that the development of children's applications is exploding.

Children's use of cooking may inspire their desire to cook real food, and perhaps these applications are also good electronic nannies. However, I doubt whether children can learn from the real knowledge of cooking. In addition, many parents complained that they had to pay for extra recipes, and the maximum price was 4.99 pounds. What is most unacceptable is that the application world is simply suffering from dessert addiction, with pictures of cupcakes, ice cream, lollipops, burgers and pizzas everywhere.

In addition, the phenomenon of advertising through these applications deserves our attention. Accessibility and parenting Cato, a British independent charity, recently sued junk food manufacturers to advertise their potential consumer targets as children through mobile games. Confectionery companies Chewits and Lovehearts are evidence of selling their products through such applications.

Fast-food companies are not outdone, have joined in the use of children to promote the army. Last month, Burger King launched a promotional campaign with the rope, the "Angry Birds" developer, in a campaign in China.

These ads may be simple ads for adults, but according to 60 surveys conducted by accessibility and parenting Cato in 12 countries, most children under the age of 10 are not able to identify the ads under the guise of the game. Worse, these games raise children's interest in high sugar, high salt and high-fat foods.

As the debate over child obesity intensifies, American food producers have been hit hard by luring children into consuming junk food through mobile games. Nutritionists and psychologists have called for companies to control the sale of unhealthy foods to children in this way. However, the latest advertising restrictions on junk food will not be implemented until 2016, and it is not known whether smartphones and tablet applications are available.