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It's
time to get serious about junk food ads aimed at kids
December 15, 05
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
SpongeBob will grow hair before the food industry gives up
marketing junk foods to kids.
But that’s what the Institute of Medicine says needs
to happen. Don’t expect the industry to do so voluntarily.
In a report written for Congress, the Institute of Medicine
calls for major changes in the way the food, beverage, restaurant,
and entertainment industries approach food advertising aimed
at children.
According to the IOM, kids under the age of 12 are influenced
by food advertising and have poorer diets because of it.
That’s a critical issue that jeopardizes the health
of our children now and in the future when they’re adults.
Childhood obesity is epidemic, and chronic diseases associated
with excess weight, such as diabetes, are on the rise among
kids. The problem is prompting health professionals and policymakers
to examine why and what to do about it.
The IOM report is one result.
“The diets of America’s children and adolescents
depart substantially from recommendations and reflect a pattern
that puts their health at risk,” the report says. Although
there isn’t enough scientific evidence to make a direct
causal link between food marketing and obesity in children,
the association is strong, the report concluded.
Given the fanfare that accompanied the report’s release,
you’d think concern about the influence of advertising
on children’s diets was something new.
It isn’t.
Child health advocates have for years been pointing to the
role advertising plays in enticing kids to eat junk. An attempt
25 years ago by the Federal Trade Commission to ban junk food
advertising targeting children failed due to pressures brought
to bear by interest groups that stood to lose.
Since then, food marketing to kids has proliferated and evolved
beyond TV and print ads to include other media such as the
Internet, movies and videogames – amounting to an astounding
$10 billion spent in 2004 in food industry marketing to kids,
the IOM says.
And, most of those kid foods and beverages are high in calories
and low in nutrition, the report says.
Halting negative effects of food marketing on kids will require
the cooperation of industry, parents and schools.
If that doesn’t work, the IOM says the government should
intervene.
“If the industries’ voluntary efforts fail to
shift the emphasis of television advertising to healthier
products aimed at children, then the committee recommends
that Congress pursue legislation that would mandate changes
in both broadcast and cable television,” said Dr. Michael
McGinnis, chair of the committee that produced the report.
Similar restrictions on junk food advertising to children
have been in effect in other countries for years. Norway and
Denmark, for example, restrict television ads aimed at kids
under age 12.
Realistically, that’s what it’s going to take
in the U.S. as well.
Just look at trans fat labeling as a case in point.
Consumer groups lobbied for ten years to have information
on trans fats added to food labels. The food industry fought
it until the White House’s powerful Office of Management
and Budget documented that lives and great amounts of health-care
spending would be saved and asked the Food and Drug Administration
to push a trans-fat labeling rule.
The only reason we’re starting to see trans fat information
on food labels is because the government told the food industry
to do it.
Right now, no government agency has the authority to tell
Spiderman to stop selling candy and soft drinks to kids.
It’s time for that to change.
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