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Fast or Junk food culture is an emerging trend among the younger generations. “Eat healthy and live healthy” is one of the essential requirements for a long life. Junk food refers to fast food, easy to make and easy to consume. The term “Junk food”, was created by Michael Jacobson, Director of the Centre for Science in 1972 in common interests who want to improve public concern about problems of food with high calorific value and low nutritional value. A junk food is given an awfully attractive appearance by adding food additives and colors to enhance flavour, texture, and for an increasing period of time. India is no exception to the changing fast food trend. There is a large influence of advertisement on eating habits of junk food. According to research, 74.5% of respondents are agreeing that it is directly influencing to young people to eat more of it. The advertisers present advertise in such a way that young and adolescents get attracted because the advertise seemed to be so colourful and the pictures of eatable item shows up so perfectly that it tempt them to buy it[3]. These days mostly teenagers spend their money on junk food while going school, college or university. And also knowing the fact that there is nothing they are gaining on junk food but still get attached on those unhealthy fast food sites[2][5]. Exposed to fast food advertisement foods, here the young people waste their money, time and also most important their health[4]. But media and advertising are so well upgraded everyday due to increase amount of youth population, through this population they target audience particularly in different mediums of junk foods and social networking[6]. Research tells us that 56.4 % people are often exposed to fast food advertisements every day, 27.3 % exposed once in a week, 10.9% once in a month and the rest never. It shows that most of the people are often exposed to fast food advertisement day to day to their life and some people once a week and some never but the fact here is that fast food is not only considered to children only but also all the growing of young generations. When one get exposed to their everyday life it is sure that one day or the other day they will be influenced by this kind of advertisements. This kind of advertisements is increasing every day and growing the profit of business in a good rate.

How Images of Other Consumers Influence Subsequent Taste Perceptions, Morgan Poor, Adam Duhachek and H. Shanker Krishnan (2013)

The aim of this study is to measure the effect of the image exposure on taste perceptions largely depends on the interaction between the type of food and whether the image shows the food alone or the food being consumed by a person. Specifically, the authors show that exposure to consummatory images of unhealthy foods increases the taste perceptions relative to food images. For the understanding of this effect researcher argue that seeing an image of someone else indulging in an unhealthy food serves as social proof of the appropriateness and acceptability of indulgent consumption. For this researcher considered five studies and omit rival explanations pertaining to goal contagion, emotional contagion, and source attractiveness.

Nutritional Content of Food and Beverage Products in Television Advertisements Seen on Children's Programming, Lisa M. Powell, Rebecca M. Schermbeck and Frank J. Chaloupka (2013) It is very much important to expose the advertisements which are responsible for the high rates of childhood obesity, assessing the nutritional content of food and beverage. For TV ratings data the children of age group 2–5 and 6–11 years of age were used to examine the nutritional content of food and beverage products in advertisements seen by children on all programming and children's programming. Based on the federal Interagency Working Group (IWG), nutritional content was assessed and recommended nutrients to limit (NTL), including saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, and sodium.Many food and beverage products shown in TV advertisements seen by children do not meet the IWG nutrition recommendations and less than one half of such advertisements are self-regulated. It can be inferred that continuous monitoring is required for such self-regulated advertisement to control its adverse impacts. Products advertised on children's versus general-audience programming and by CFBAI- versus non-CFBAI-member companies are particularly of low nutritional quality, suggesting that self-regulation has not successfully protected children from exposure to advertising for unhealthy foods. 

Influence of food companies' brand mascots and entertainment companies' cartoon media characters on children's diet and health: a systematic review and research needs, V I Kraak and M Story (2015)

The important obesity prevention goals are reducing the extent and persuasive power of marketing unhealthy foods to children worldwide. The objective of this study is to understanding how children's diet is influenced by brand mascots and cartoon media characters.A systematic review of five electronic databases (2000–2014) were conducted to identify experimental studies which measured how food companies' mascots and entertainment companies' media characters influence up to 12 diet-related cognitive, behavioral and health outcomes for children under 12 years. In the inclusion criteria eleven studies met. Studies used 21 unique popular media characters, but no brand mascots.This study concluded that cartoon media character branding can positively raise children's fruit or vegetable intake compared with no character branding. However, it can be stated that familiar media character branding is a more powerful influence on children's food preferences, choices and intake, especially for nutrient-poor foods (e.g. cookies, candy or chocolate) and energy-dense compared with fruits or vegetables.

Influence of child-targeted fast food TV advertising exposure on fast food intake: a longitudinal study of preschool-age children, Jennifer A. Emond, Meghan R. Longacre and Keith M. Drake (2019)

In the present scenario among children, there is a direct link between advertising of fast food and its consumption, through various review of literature the impact of such advertising on children’s FF intake has not been assessed in a naturalistic and longitudinal study. It is also unknown that whether the parents’ fast food consumption mitigates advertising effects or not.

For this study one-year (2014-15) longitudinal study was conducted among 624 preschool-age children, 3–5 years old, and one parent was considered from New Hampshire. In every eight weeks, six online surveys were completed by parents and, at each, reported the number of times their children consumed fast food in the past week. Advertisement exposure of each child was determined by counting the brand-specific fast food advertisements aired within the programs they viewed on children’s TV networks during the study and Parents reported their own consumption frequency of fast food. The reported data was analyzed during 2017-18. This study suggested that fast food advertising targeted to children’s may mitigate the protective effect of infrequent parental fast food intake on children’s fast food intake.

Effects of Advertising on Food Consumption Preferences in Children, José Antonio Ponce-Blandon and Maria de las Mercedes Lomas-Campos (2020) The main object of this study was to know is there any exposure to commercial messages which advertise food products exerts have any effect on the short-term consumption preferences of the children between the age group 4 to 6 years. For this study double-blind and randomized experimental design is used. Sample size is 421 boys and girls from twelve schools in a city in Spain were considered. In the case of products with wide brand awareness the convincing effect of commercials has shown to be influential in a general, immediate, and significant way. This research study strengthen the importance of advertising and focuses that it is very much important to control the content of TV commercials.

Primary data is used in this study. Data was collected using a questionnaire and its reliability was tested using SPSS (Software Package for Social Science) 25.0. Sample of 500 respondents were collected and analysis was done. Using PP-plot we infer that our data was not normal, so we apply non-parametric test. The Mann-Whitney U test is used to test the significant difference between branding & advertisement and consumption frequency of junk food. The analysis was done using SPSSand a p value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

The Mann-Whitney U test is used to compare differences between two independent groups when the dependent variable is either ordinal or continuous, but not normally distributed.

When we are interested in testing the difference in means of two independent populations then we use two sample t-test. To use the t-test however, it is necessary to make a set of assumptions. In particular, it is necessary that two independent samples be randomly drawn from normal populations having equal variances and the data be measured in at least of an interval scale. But in studies of consumer behavior, marketing research, experiments of psychology, etc. generally the data are collected in ordinal scale and the form of the population is not known. Since the parametric t-test could not be used in such a situation, an appropriate non-parametric technique is needed. In such a circumstance a very simple non-parametric test known as Mann-Whitney U test may be used.

This test may also be viewed as a substitute for the parametric t-test for the difference between two population means. When assumptions of the two-sample t-test are fulfilled then this test is slightly weaker than t-test.

This test work under the following assumptions: 

(i) The two samples are randomly and independently drawn from their respective populations.

(ii) The variable under study is continuous.

(iii) The measurement scale is at least ordinal.

(iv) The distributions of two populations differ only with respect to location parameters

Test Statistic for the Mann Whitney U Test

The test statistic for the Mann Whitney U Test is denoted U and is the smaller of U₁ and U₂, defined below.

U₁=n₁n₂+n₁(n₁+1)/2-R₁

U₂=n₁n₂+n₂(n₂+1)/2-R₂

n₁: number of units in sample 1

n₂: number of units in sample 2

R₁: Rank sum of sample 1

R₂: Rank sum of sample 2

Now, our test statistic (U) will be smaller than U₁ and U₂.

Now, we look at the critical values in the table with respect to n₁ and n₂ (take it U₀).

if U <= U₀ : we reject the null hypothesis.

Otherwise, we do not reject the null hypothesis.

Table 1: Rank Statistics

	v14(Consumption Frequency)	N	Mean Rank	Sum of Ranks
v6(Branding)	.00	387	243.30	93912.50
	1.00	113	272.90	30837.50
	Total	500
v7(Advertisements)	.00	387	241.29	93136.50
	1.00	113	279.77	31613.50
	Total	500

 Table 2:Mann-Whitney U Test

	v6(Branding)	v7(Advertisements)
Mann-Whitney U	19221.500	18445.500
Wilcoxon W	93912.500	93136.500
Z	-2.322	-2.899
Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)	.020	.004
a. Grouping Variable: v14

The variables that are considered in the above analysis pertain to the questions corresponding to frequency consumption and questions pertaining to branding and advertisements. V14 is the consumption frequency, v6 is effect of branding and v7 is effect of advertisements.

1. A.B. Tsybakov,(2009), Introduction to Nonparametric Estimation. 2. A. H. Sequeira (2014), A Study on Junk Food Consumption Behavior Among College Students. 3. José Antonio Ponce-Blandón, (2020), Effects of Advertising on Food Consumption Preferences in Children. 4. Khangembam Chingkheinganbi Chanu, (2021), Junk or Fast Food Culture and its impact on Health. 5. Rashmi Kashyap, (2014), Impact of junk food on the nutritional and other health parameter of the school going children 13 to 17 of the drug city. 6. Sofie van Rongen, (2021), Social contextual influences on unhealthy food consumption: A psychological approach. 7. Emond J.A., Longacre M.R., Drake K.M., Titus L.J., Hendricks K., MacKenzie T., Harris J.L., Carroll J.E., Cleveland L.P., Gaynor K., et al. Influence of child-targeted fast food TV advertising exposure on fast food intake: A longitudinal study of preschool-age children. Appetite. 2019;140:134–141. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.05.012. 8. Kraak V.L., Story M. Influence of food companies’ brand mascots and entertainment companies’ cartoon media characters on children’s diet and health: A systematic review and research needs. Obes. Rev. 2015;16:107–126. doi: 10.1111/obr.12237. 9. Poor M., Duhachek A., Krishnan H.S. How images of other consumers influence subsequent taste perceptions. J. Mark. 2013;77:124–139. doi: 10.1509/jm.12.0021. 10. Powell L.M., Schermbeck R.M., Chaloupka F.J. Nutritional content of food and beverage products in television advertisements seen on children’s programming. Child. Obes. 2013;9:524–531.doi:10.1089/chi.2013.0072