If you ever wondered why so many young Americans are spotty, overweight, and just generally a pain in the butt... Listen up... We are to blame. And no, I'm not talking about us as parents (well, maybe to a certain extent) I'm talking about the "Us" in the ad biz. Did you know that here in the US, food companies spent $1.6 billion to market products to children and teens in 2006. Of which $870 million was targeted to children under 12, and about $1 billion was aimed at teens, according to a report released yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission.
Here's the best bit... The food advertisers' favorite medium was TV, where, it would seem that few of the primetime shows met the food advertisers' criteria for targeting to children. (And, this is really funny... Coca-Cola has decided it should only think of itself as "advertising to children" when over 50 percent of a show's audience is under 12.)
In response, the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a coalition of 14 food companies — including Coca-Cola and Kellogg — promised they would either stop targeting children in advertising, or promote only "better-for-you products." Meaning products they claim are invested with some kind of nutritional value.
Just as companies were permitted to define what "advertising to children" meant, each was permitted to define for itself what "better-for-you" represented.
Nonetheless, the pledge seemed to appease the FTC. Director Lydia Parnes of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection concluded that joining the coalition would serve as "a useful first step" for other food marketers.
Oh, please give me a break... Isn't this the old "Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse routine?"
Interesting article, but food advertising to children is just one (and a minor one) of the influencers in children’s food choice. Lots of literature on the subject has deducted that peer and parental influence is a highly significant factor, while the biggest reason behind the growth of child obesity is an increasingly sedentary lifestyle for kids, where an intake of energy dense foods are combined with little or no exercise, with even school PE lessons a rarity, especially as premium school land is sold off to developers.
It just seems that sometimes advertising is an easy scapegoat for subjects like this, when really it is just one element of a multi-dimensional problem, in which everyone has a part to play.
George Parker
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