Currently browsing posts about: Marketing to kids

So the British food industry has this brilliant idea: let’s ask kids what they like to eat. And, presumably, give it to them. The plan is to host a one-day conference for this purpose. I’m truly astonished. I thought food companies already invested fortunes in finding out what kids like.  Junk food, mostly.  So let’s give them credit for at least raising the possibility of healthier options.  I, of course, have this old-fashioned idea that kids don’t innately know what’s good for them and should only be offered healthy foods, which won’t help food companies much.

Mary Story, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has done terrific work on revealing the extent of food marketing to children, gave the first annual Michael & Susan Dell Distinguished Lecture in child health at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Austin, just a year ago on April 13, 2007. But now her slides – full of interesting tidbits and data – are online for viewing and well worth a look.

Canadian food companies argue that there is no point in banning food marketing to kids because the bans don’t keep kids from becoming obese. Maybe, but I’m just back from the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue in Washington, DC, a conference in which officials from Canada and Europe discussed what they were doing to address childhood obesity on the policy level. In a word–European countries are taking the challenge seriously and are doing a lot more than we are. I was most impressed by a report about Quebec, which banned marketing to kids in 1982. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but rates of childhood obesity are lower in Quebec than in any other Canadian province. But so are fast food sales so it’s no wonder food companies are upset.

The April issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association carries three research papers on the current state of food marketing to children. One finds that websites targeted to kids carry advertising for junk foods. One compared breakfast cereals marketed to children to those marketed to adults; the kids’ cereals had more calories, sugars, and salt but less fiber and protein (oh, great). The third looked at Saturday morning TV and found 90% of the food commercials to be for junk foods. Hmm. Doesn’t sound like much has changed since the Institute of Medicine’s call for stopping all this (or at least slowing it down). Time to hold food companies accountable, I think.

In trying to figure out what to do about childhood obesity, the comments on the recent post raise issues worth pondering. Anna, for example, points out that food ads are banned in Norway but that kids are still getting fatter (although to a lesser extent than in the U.S.). She writes: “I just don’t think it [the ban] makes enough of a difference, even if it seems like a good idea on some fronts. It is the larger culture of commercialism and consumerism that surrounds children in Westernized countries, and if Norway can’t regulate commercial influences away, the US certainly can’t.”

Maybe not, but this view leads to two possibilities for dealing with childhood obesity on the policy level.  One is to do nothing (because doing something won’t do any good anyway).    The other, which I prefer, is to start taking actions, one at a time, in the hope of creating an environment more favorable to healthy eating for kids.  A ban on marketing seems like a reasonable first step, as does doing something about school food.  These might make it easier to teach kids (and parents) some critical thinking around food issues, some cooking skills, and something about where food comes from and why it matters.  The long-range goal is to create a food environment that promotes healthy eating as the default.  This means doing something, even if the results aren’t immediately obvious.   That’s why I’m so in favor of calorie labeling, marketing restrictions, school food improvements, efforts to move supermarkets into low income neighborhoods, farmers’ markets, CSAs, and everything else that makes it easier to eat better.  Eventually, they may add up to something that registers on weight surveys.  And that hope keeps me going.  How about you?

Consumers International and the International Obesity Task Force have just proposed a ban on global marketing of food to children that goes much further than the voluntary promises of food product companies like Kraft, Kellogg, and PepsiCo. The proposal calls for:

• No radio or TV advertising of junk foods (including beverages) from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• No marketing of junk foods on social-networking Web sites and other forms of new media.
• No gifts and toys to promote junk foods.
• No use of celebrities to market junk foods.
• No use of cartoon characters to market junk foods.

Why are they doing this? Because voluntary industry efforts are not working. I wonder how far they will get with this thoughtful and hard-hitting proposal.

A study from Johns Hopkins has done for Hispanic TV what decades of studies have done for general TV: analyzed the number and content of televised food commercials. Guess what: one-third of food commercials on Spanish-language TV are directed to kids and most of these are for junk foods or sodas. Surprise!

CSPI has just completed its investigation of the extent of food marketing in the Montgomery County, Maryland, school district. Guess what? There is plenty of it, even in elementary schools:30% of elementary schools use candy, baked goods, soda, fast food, or restaurant food at fundraisers. Guess what? Most of the marketing in junior high and high schools is also for junk foods. And all this is still happening despite excellent wellness policies. We have work to do!