[1] Our Case Study originated from the United States, where we identified a risk of fast food consumption.

As studies show, almost 20% of Americans eat at fast food restaurants at least twice a week. The US fast food industry has also been consistently performing well, with its 2010 market expected to grow nearly 5% of its 2009 performance, and overall US fast food market is expected to exceed US $170 billion by 2010, indicating increasing fast food consumption. So why has fast food consumption been increasing? [2] The need to take this risk is attributed to three factors. 1. Long Working Hours 2. Short Lunch Breaks 3. Childrens Persuasion [3] The number of overall working hours of US workers has increased between 1979 and 2009. The proportion of US employees working more than 48 hours per week has also increased. Therefore, they have less time outside work, and less time for other things. Thus, a need for a fast way of dining has surfaced. [4] They also face the problem of shorter lunch breaks. The time spent on lunch break has decreased from 36 minutes in 1996 to 31 minutes in 2005, and more than half the workers take less than half an hour for lunch break. There is a need for a convenient way of dining to save time. [5] Children are attracted by the toys which come along with McDonalds Happy Meal, and would pester their parents for it. It is likely that parents will relent and purchase the product. And therefore, a need for the family to dine in fast food restaurants or order takeaway for their children. Why are children the target audience? As mentioned earlier, parents give in to children when they cry for an item. Children are also especially susceptible to the effect of advertisement. By advertising products to the correct audience, McDonalds is able to sustain its market among children and thus maintain the

business. Our Cross reference to the company Fun and Functions has also proven the importance of choosing the correct target audience. [6] From here, we developed our first lesson learnt, When promoting an idea or product, the correct audience must be identified to enhance the effectiveness of the project. [7] We have identified the main positive and negative effects of consuming fast food and they are listed here. [8] So one positive effect is the ability to save time due to short waiting time and short service time thanks to the use of preheated or precooked ingredients, and the use of drive-thru windows. [9] They save money since the production costs are lowered, and the price of fast food in US is cheaper than food in restaurants. [10] and Convenience, since US has the highest number of McDonalds branches per capita in the world and US people live in close proximity to McDonalds outlets. Dining in fast food restaurants is HIGHLY convenient. [11] Our second lesson learnt is derived here. In order to appeal to the public, an idea or product must be presented in a convenient way for customers so as to make them more receptive towards the idea or the product. This is the reason why despite the awareness of high-calorie content of fast food, fast food consumption is still high due to the convenience. This is also the reason for the enormous success of 7-Eleven in Japan.. [12] The most significant negative effects are Obesity and Diabetes. America is one of the countries with the highest obesity rates. On TOP of that, from the graph, we see that the American population is experiencing an increasing trend of obesity and overweight. Our research has also shown that consumption of fast food increases the risk of contracting diabetes. US has taken actions to solve this matter and are as follows

[13] 1. They demanded McDonalds to make the nutritional information of their food products available online to help consumers make a more informed choice. [14] 2. California banned artery-clogging trans-fats and Los Angeles set one-year moratorium on new fast-food outlets in a 32 square-mile area of South Los Angeles to reduce fast food consumption by reducing the exposure of fast food to the public. [15] 3. The New York City Calorie Labelling Program. Fast food chains with more than 15 branches nationally are requested to label the calorie amount of each food item. This raises the consumers awareness so that they can act responsibly to cut down on the amount purchased. However, it has been observed that this program has seen no obvious success. [16] Which gives us our third lesson, Feeding information is not enough to change peoples habits; they have to know how to apply the information obtained From the information we have gathered, what have we done regarding the risk of unhealthy eating habits among Singapore teenagers? QianPin will introduce you to our project which aims to reduce the negative impacts.