The results, now almost final, look like this:
And
Recall what this cost, and then some:
Next? Fingers crossed.
But at least this.
You can always vote with your fork. Today is the day to vote with your vote!
The World Health Organization’s Europe branch has issued a brave new report: Tackling food marketing to children in a digital world: trans-disciplinary perspectives (2016)
I say brave because marketing to children is the food industry’s line in the sand.
Food and beverage companies will not stop marketing to children because doing so will hurt their bottom lines too much.
WHO Europe makes eight recommendations, all of them highly political:
1. Acknowledge States’ duty to protect children online with statutory regulation
2. Extend offline protections online
3. Define legal age, rather than leaving commercial interests to do so
4. Define marketing directed to children
5. Draw on existing legislation, regulation and regulatory agencies
6. Compel private Internet platforms to remove marketing of foods high in saturated fat, salt and/ or free sugars
7. Develop appropriate sanction and penalty mechanisms
8. Devise cross-border international responses
The report’s conclusion:
Children’s participation in digital media should not, however, be predicated on receiving digital HFSS [high in saturated fats, salt and/or free sugars] advertising. Digital marketing can amplify the power of earlier marketing practices by identifying and targeting more vulnerable populations with sophisticated analytics and creating engaging, emotion-focused, entertaining ways to reach children.
Nor should children’s digital participation be predicated on “devolving” consent to parents, which is akin to States expecting parents to completely prohibit their children from watching all television in order to avoid HFSS marketing, rather than implementing broadcast regulations.
Instead, States and supra-national actors should devise ways to allow children to participate in the digital world without being targeted by marketers with immersive, engaging, entertaining marketing of products that have been demonstrated to be injurious to their health.
Now if governments would just listen….
The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the Univeristy of Connecticut produces terrific reports. The latest is Baby Food FACTS: Nutrition and marketing of baby and toddler foods and drinks:
Infant formula companies have a marketing problem: breast milk is a better option, all formulas have the same nutrient composition by FDA regulation, and babies only need to use formula for a few months.
Baby food companies also have a marketing problem: babies can eat table foods (suitably ground or cut) and don’t really need the stuff in jars (convenient thought they may be).
The Rudd Center report takes a good hard look at the
The findings: The nutritional quality is pretty much as advertised but nearly 60 percent of advertising dollars go for products that are not recommended for young children such as sugar-sweetened toddler milk, nutritionally poor snack food, and Pediasure, a high-calorie liquid nutrition supplement.
Here’s the full report
And here’s a summary
This year, only three Senators—Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Richard Durbin—got top scores from Food Policy Action for their votes on food and farm issues. This is down from the 29 who earned perfect scores in 2015.
In the House, 79 representatives got perfect scores as opposed to 87 in 2015.
The annual Scorecard ranks lawmakers on whether they support legislation on issues such as GMO labeling, hunger, fisheries management, food waste, pesticides, the EPA’s waters of the U.S. rule, among others.
It’s disappointing that fewer legislators are getting top scores, since one of the purposes of this activity is to hold them accountable and encourage more liberal voting on food and farm issues.
As decriminalization of marijuana use proceeds steadily, I am seeing more attention focused on cannabis-infused edibles. These are now produced commercially by businesses that go well beyond brownies.
Pediatricians, as I’ve discussed previously, are worried about kids eating them.
These days:
But in Colorado, where such things are legal, producers are complaining that the regulatory environment is so difficult that they can’t make a profit.
According to a report in the industry newsletter, Bakery and Snacks, the profit problem was the focus of an education session at a Las Vegas conference on “The Future of Wholesale Baking with Marijuana,” conducted by two producers of infused edibles, Sweet Grass Kitchen and Love’s Oven. Their gripes:
Startups are always hard. But with half of $27 billion at stake, and more and more states considering legalizing the stuff, I can see why they are hanging in there.
While we are on the topic, a new paper in JAMA reviews statistics on marijuana use in the U.S. and reports 7000 new users a day, and rising. It calls for better surveillance of how much is used, and how.
I will be watching the use and the business of edibles with much interest.
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a front-page story titled “Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops.”
The controversy over genetically modified crops has long focused on largely unsubstantiated fears that they are unsafe to eat.
But an extensive examination by The New York Times indicates that the debate has missed a more basic problem — genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides.
The Times illustrated the article with some interesting graphics.
This one shows European yields of non-GMO sugar beets increasing far more rapidly than those of GMO beets in the U.S.
Others compare use of chemical pesticides, first in France, where pesticide use is falling rapidly.
Then in the U.S. where insecticide and fungicide use is down a bit, but herbicide use is rising and will continue to rise as GMO crops become increasingly resistant to Roundup (glyphosate) herbicides.
The agbiotech industry has long maintained that genetic modification would increase yields and decrease pesticide use. After 20 years, that hasn’t happened.
I wrote about all this in 2003 in my book Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety. Half the book is about GMOs and its arguments hold up pretty well.
I said then and still maintain that until this industry fulfills its promises—and produces GMO crops sustainably—it will continue to have big problems with consumer acceptance.
The Times says this is the first article in an occasional series. I look forward to seeing the next.
Aren’t you happy that it’s that sweet, gooey time of year again?
As Julia Belluz of Vox points out
Candy and Halloween didn’t always go hand in hand. It wasn’t until the 1950s that that candy industry started to push the stuff as a way to boost flagging fall sales.
The candy industry would love you to think:
Kids do love candy, as this marketing report tells us. I’ll bet these favorites have everything to do with advertising budgets.
Does candy have a place in healthy diets? Sure, but in very small and occasional amounts.
Good luck getting through tonight’s trick-or-treat.
Happy Halloween, everyone.
