Selling to kids? Take note

CARTOON characters on packages of toaster pastries. Fun-filled websites touting sugary refined cereals. TV ad time stuffed with pitches for sweet, salty, fatty foods. Soft drinks promoted in schools.

Enough is enough, says a special panel of government advisors in a new report: The industries that market foods need to use their powers to do more for children’s health -- by making and packaging more nutritious products and creating demand for them.

Calling the marketing of unhealthful food “ubiquitous on the American landscape,” the report, released last week by the Institute of Medicine, expressed little doubt that such marketing has contributed to the significant rise in obesity rates among American children.

“The food, beverage and restaurant industries devote far too much of their marketing to high-calorie products that contain excessive amounts of fat, salt and added sugars and that lack key nutrients,” said the institute’s Dr. J. Michael McGinnis, who chaired the 18-month study, titled “Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity?” (The report, released Tuesday, can be read online at www.iom.edu.)

McGinnis and a committee of more than a dozen other experts in psychology, nutrition, marketing and media from around the country called for a revolution in food marketing aimed at children. They urged lawmakers and the government to set a two-year timetable for the food industry to make sweeping changes in the fare it advertises -- or face legislation to force its hand.

“The turnaround required is so substantial, and the issues are so complex, that the involvement and leadership of the food and beverage industry is essential,” McGinnis said last week.

If the federal government takes up the committee’s recommendations, the weight of food marketing and advertising aimed at kids would shift from foods and beverages with little nutritional value to those with a healthier profile.

Popular cartoon characters such as Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants could migrate from the cookie and cereal aisles of the supermarket to the produce section.

Foods low in fat, sugar and salt could get special kid-friendly labels, take pride of place on supermarket shelves and win coveted advertising spots during children’s television programming.

Restaurants that cater to children would more actively market their healthful meal options and post nutritional information about their kids’ meals, so that parents could guide their children toward good choices.

Those recommendations emerged from an exhaustive review of the scientific literature on kids and food marketing. The institute, which serves as an advisor to the federal government on matters of public health, was asked in 2004 to conduct the review by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After assessing some 120 studies, the panel concluded that there is strong evidence for things many parents and nutrition experts have long complained about: that the advertising punctuating commercial children’s television is overwhelmingly for fat-, salt- or sugar-laden treats with scant nutritional content; that the appeals to buy these products are omnipresent in kids’ lives; and that this marketing influences what children -- at least those younger than 12 -- want to eat and pester their parents to buy.

U.S. companies, notes the report, spent an estimated $10 billion in 2004 to market food, beverages and meals to kids.

“Marketing works,” the panel concluded -- and, as a result, parents’ efforts to encourage their children to make healthful food and beverage choices are up against enormous odds.

The panel found convincing evidence that children younger than 4 typically cannot distinguish between an advertisement and entertainment programming. It also concluded that most children younger than 8 do not understand advertising’s “persuasive intent.”

Such studies led the American Psychological Assn. in 2004 to conclude that advertising to kids under 8 exploits their vulnerabilities and should be restricted -- by law if necessary.

Among children 12 to 18, the panel found insufficient evidence that food marketing influenced long-term food and drink preferences or short-term consumption. But it did find strong statistical evidence that, among both younger children and teens, those who watched the most TV (and who thus were exposed to the most food advertising) were most likely to be overweight.

The evidence fell short of establishing that TV ads cause excessive weight. But “even a small influence, aggregated over the entire population of American children and youth, would be consequential in impact,” the report stated.

Among the committee’s recommendations:

* Government organizations, philanthropies, healthcare groups and food industry and marketing interests should band together to craft a “massive social marketing campaign” that would help boost demand for healthful foods among children. Such a campaign, the panel warned, would likely take years to stabilize and reverse kids’ rising rate of excess weight.

* Schools and government should develop and apply standards for foods and beverages sold or marketed inside schools, to ensure that schools “focus on products that support healthful diets.”

* The Children’s Advertising Review Board, an industry organization that has set voluntary standards for advertising to kids, should expand and apply its guidelines to other forms of marketing that reach children. These include Internet and wireless phone advertising and supermarket displays.

* Food, beverage and restaurant companies, and the entertainment and marketing industries, should strengthen and enforce existing standards for marketing. Cartoon characters should be used only to market healthful foods.

The panel stopped short of calling for a moratorium on food advertising directly aimed at kids, as has long been the practice in several European countries. It argued that if the food and beverage industry were banned from marketing to kids altogether it would have little incentive to join the fight against obesity.

Ellen Wartella, provost of UC Riverside and a member of the panel, said that these companies’ deep pockets and marketing acumen are key to the success of any broad effort to improve kids’ food choices. Wartella said that in recent months, several industry leaders “have taken to heart” concerns about children’s growing struggle with weight and expressed their desire to help fight obesity in children. She cited the example of Kraft Foods Inc., which last January promised to curb advertising of some of its most popular kids’ foods to children under 12. Kraft also pledged to adopt new nutritional standards for the foods that it would market to children.

Nickelodeon, an entertainment giant that caters to young viewers, has launched several programming initiatives designed to get kids to exercise more and eat better.

“We’re taking the food industry at its word,” said Wartella, who is an authority on children, media and marketing. As to whether such pledges will translate into real changes, “we’ll see,” she added.

The panel urged the federal government and Congress to ensure that industries involved in marketing foods to kids get with the new program without delay. It recommended that the Department of Health and Human Services delegate an agency to monitor progress and issue a report to lawmakers in two years. If progress at that point is insufficient, Congress should consider legislation mandating changes.

The recommendations now go to the Bush administration. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt has called obesity one of the nation’s most pressing public health priorities.

However, the administration usually has favored voluntary actions by industry over government mandates in combating the nation’s weight problem.