Last week at a childhood obesity conference, I participated in an important panel to discuss what has become a controversial strategy among some advocates for children’s health: calling on industry to market “healthy” food to children.
As Susan Linn and I explained in our recent article, any marketing to children is deceptive and harmful; it doesn’t matter what the product is.
By Susan Linn and Michele Simon
In response to the public outcry over the negative impacts of junk food marketing to children, food companies have started using popular media characters to market “healthy” foods to children. These products include fruits and vegetables, as well as processed food. So we now have Campbell’s Disney Princess “Healthy Kids” soup, Kellogg’s Scooby-Doo! cereal (with less sugar), and others.
But is this really progress?
The developmental vulnerabilities of children, along with the legal, ethical, and political pitfalls of encouraging the food industry to target kids, make marketing food to children harmful regardless of nutritional content.
Last week at McDonald’s annual shareholder’s meeting, CEO Don Thompson got caught off-guard when a team of 15 advocates, led by Corporate Accountability International, descended upon corporate headquarters to question the fast food leader’s relentless exploitation of children and communities of color.
Read rest at Corporate Accountability International ….
At a recent summit on childhood obesity, the first lady announced a shift in her well-known Let’s Move campaign — away from food reform and toward an increased focus on exercise. Instead of “forcing [children] to eat their vegetables,” she told her audience, “it’s getting them to go out there and have fun.” Yes, you heard that right. The first lady actually said that eating vegetables is a chore. And that playing is a preferable focus for her campaign because it’s easier. Read rest at Grist…
Marion Nestle, the author of Food Politics, recently got a reminder that food is indeed political, right up to the nation’s highest office. On November 30, the first lady made a speech in which she announced that her Let’s Move campaign (on childhood obesity) would have a renewed focus on physical fitness, to combat “the crisis of inactivity that we see among our kids.”
A colleague sent me this hilarious email message from one Tom Forsythe, vice president of corporate communications at General Mills. It seems that the mega cereal company found itself on the receiving end of a barrage of emails complaining about its opposition to the voluntary marketing to children guidelines proposed by the federal government. (I wrote about Big Food’s lobbying assault recently for Food Safety News.) So what else is the maker of Reese’s Puffs and Lucky Charms to do but put its PR machine into overdrive by explaining itself. Here is the company’s pathetic attempt in its entirety.
The kind folks at Nourish interviewed me recently. Here it is, cross-posted from their site.
Michele Simon: It’s quite simple. Food companies convince us to buy unhealthy foods with very sophisticated marketing plans that target specific populations, including youth. Companies want to get children hooked on their brands early so that they will win over life-long customers. The industry says we advocates have no “proof” that food marketing influences people’s eating habits, but if marketing didn’t work, why would food companies spend billions of dollars a year doing it?
The following op-ed was recently published in numerous newspapers across the country through McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
When Michelle Obama first announced her Let’s Move program to end childhood obesity “within a generation” last year, I tried to remain open-minded. Like many others, I was happy to have the First Lady bring attention to this important problem. And there’s no doubt that her leadership has helped, for example, to get Congress to make improvements to school meals. But I remained concerned that the White House was reluctant to take on the food industry in any meaningful way. It seems that things are worse than I thought.
I am not a fan of any sort of “awareness” month as I find the concept trivializes important health issues. Are we only supposed to care about heart disease, diabetes, etc, during that one month of the year? And I rarely see anything of substance come from the month-long activities, just the usual ineffective educational campaigns, instead of meaningful public policy reforms. Plus many issues tend to crowd themselves into certain months, so it all becomes background noise. September is one such month. Among other causes (e.g., “cholesterol education”), September has been proclaimed “Childhood Obesity Awareness Month” by Congress and President Obama. Continue reading →
