Critics Target TV Food Ads Aimed at Kids : Television: The children’s market is lucrative because more kids make the decision about what to eat and they have influence on what parents buy, the networks say.

At a time when television advertising is in a prolonged slump across the nation, fast-food restaurants and some food manufacturers have more than doubled the amount of money they spend wooing a single category of TV viewers--children.

The reason, according to the networks, is that with parents working, more and more children are making their own decisions about what to eat. At the same time, the networks say, children have a tremendous influence on what their parents buy.

But a growing number of children’s advocacy groups--including the national PTA and the American Academy of Pediatrics--have joined a campaign against food ads aimed at children. These groups, led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, say most of the food advertised is unhealthful and could contribute to the growing problem of childhood--and lifetime--obesity.

“Commercialism targeted to kids is big business and, really, it’s getting out of control,” said Arnold Fege, director of governmental relations for the national , which along with other participants in the campaign recently filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission about food ads aimed at children. “They’re out to make a buck and they’re targeting kids.”

Rep. Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.), who has threatened to introduce legislation to require television stations to run public-service announcements for healthful foods if broadcasters and food manufacturers don’t do more to educate children about good nutrition, said most food ads prey on children’s vulnerability and push products that are high in sugar, salt and fat.

“If you have a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old, as I do, you see a lot of this stuff on Saturday mornings,” said Wyden, who has asked the FCC to make nutritional information for children a requirement for stations wishing to renew their licenses. “Kids who spend three hours in front of the set on Saturday mornings get a sense that the food universe is built around sugar and fat.”

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a recent study of 20 hours of Saturday morning programs on the broadcast networks and Nickelodeon cable channel revealed 263 commercials and public-service announcements for food, 61% of the total ads broadcast.

Of those, seven, or 3%, were public-service announcements or special ads presented by food companies that discussed good nutrition. Eight more were for low-sugar cereals.

The remaining 248, in order of frequency by category, were for high-sugar breakfast cereals, candy, fast food, drinks and chocolate syrup, entrees and canned pasta, cookies and chips.

And according to figures provided by ABC, advertiser spending for the fall season on children’s television by fast-food companies on the four networks is 64% higher than last year, to $40 million.

“The reason food advertisers are going after kids in a big way is because with the advent of two parents working in a household, kids are eating on their own a lot more, making a lot of purchasing decisions on their own and they’re a lot more influential in their parents’ purchasing decisions,” said ABC spokesman Steve Battaglio. “The advertisers are aware of this and they are targeting the kids.”

ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox have guidelines for commercials aimed at children. And with the exception of CBS, whose executives refused to comment for this article, all have said that the guidelines protect children from manipulative or deceptive ads.

“Anyone who markets to children realizes that there is a tremendous responsibility in communicating to those children in an accurate way,” said Helen Boehm, vice president of Fox Children’s Network, who monitors advertisements aimed at children. “And I think we’re very sensitive to that.”

The guidelines vary only slightly among the networks, and are mostly based on rules developed by the children’s advertising review unit of the national Better Business Bureau.

The rules, which have been adopted voluntarily by advertisers and broadcasters, prohibit companies from making deceptive claims, such as calling a snack product an appropriate substitute for a meal.

The guidelines say that ads “should not create unattainable performance expectations nor exploit the younger child’s difficulty in distinguishing between the real and the fanciful.”

The ads also may not imply that children will be more popular if they eat a certain food. They seek to prevent advertisers from showing children eating more than one portion of a food, and require that the food be shown in the context of a nutritionally balanced meal.

“If I saw somebody devouring bowls and bowls of Fruit Loops, no, it wouldn’t be on our air,” Boehm said. “Would I show a child eating a bowl of Fruit Loops with a balanced breakfast disclosure showing other food products including toast and juice with the Fruit Loops? Probably yes.”

The idea, according to Arthur Pober, director of the children’s advertising review unit at the Better Business Bureau, is to make sure the commercials are fair and honest. But that, he said, must be coupled with an effort to educate children that the aim of advertising is to sell them something, and to teach them how to judge the claims made in a commercial.

To that end, Pober said, the children’s review unit has prepared a pamphlet to help parents explain to their children about advertising.

Horst Stipp, a sociologist who is director of social research for NBC, said that the real culprits are not commercials, but parents who do not limit what their children eat, and a tendency among children to enjoy high-sugar, high-fat food.

“In an ideal world, we wouldn’t want to have children who prefer this kind of food over other kinds of foods,” said Stipp, whose network dropped its cartoon programming on Saturday in favor of news. “Is there really somebody out there who would really claim that a child who has never ever seen an advertisement would prefer a sugarless cereal over one with sugar?”

The marketplace, Stipp said, dictates that food manufacturers make high-sugar, high-fat foods, because that’s what kids prefer and what their parents buy.

But Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that not all parents are in a position to intervene between their children and the powerful messages offered in television commercials.

“You’re pitting the best minds on Madison Avenue against the most vulnerable minds in our society,” Jacobson said, referring to children.

According to Jacobson and the others involved in the campaign, guidelines and consumer education are not enough to prevent some children from developing a misguided idea about foods, and perhaps developing dangerous nutrition problems.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently called for an outright ban on food ads on children’s television, saying that “the commercialization of children’s television exploits children” and that “parents rather than children should determine what children should eat.”

The PTA’s Fege said that he would support the elimination of all advertisements aimed at children, not just food ads. Such a prohibition is already in effect in Canada.

But Jacobson said it would not be realistic to expect the United States to embrace such an idea. Instead, he said, the center and affiliated groups are asking the networks to air enough flashy, well-produced public-service announcements about good nutrition to counter the commercials for junk food.

Some such announcements are already in the works, the result of pressure by Wyden and the groups involved in the campaign.

The Dole Food Co., for example, has prepared a public-service announcement on nutrition that is currently on several networks. Kellogg Co. and McDonald’s Corp. have prepared commercials that, instead of touting the company’s products, simply announce the name of the company as the sponsor of the message, and then discuss nutrition.

ABC, which was alone among the networks in running three public-service announcements on nutrition on the morning that the Center for Science study was conducted, has promised to run at least one public-service announcement on nutrition each Saturday morning, and it plans to air the McDonald’s and Kellogg spots.

But while Fox’s Boehm said that she would air the paid spots prepared by the food companies, she resisted the idea of airing more public-service announcements. Fox already airs them with safety tips for latchkey kids, information about drugs and AIDS prevention and other issues, Boehm said, and those subjects have a higher priority on the network’s limited non-commercial time than spots about nutrition.

And Boehm said that an attempt to limit or eliminate advertising to children could lead the networks to abandon youngsters altogether.

“Look at what happened at NBC,” Boehm said.

“The same people who don’t believe in advertising to kids want lots of variety and lots of programming for children,” she said. “It’s just not going to happen without lots of advertisers getting involved. Otherwise we’ll all be like NBC. We’ll all have all adult programming.”