Junk Food Marketing Linked to Childhood Obesity

Tracy Sutton
Northern Editor

HARRISBURG, Pa. — “As a mom, I believe in manipulating children,” joked Dr. Margo Wootan, director of Nutrition Policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, addressing the conference here “Strengthening the Food Resource Safety Net.” Wootan confessed to scheming to entice her daughter to eat whole grains, fruits and vegetables. It’s a hard battle when the food industry spends $10 billion yearly on promoting junk food.

“Parents are out-maneuvered,” said Wootan.

The conference this week, co-hosted by the Pennsylvania Nutrition Education Network and the Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center, examined nutrition initiatives in the state and the challenges of feeding underserved communities in a time of global rising food prices.

The Tuesday evening keynote address by Wootan was an indictment of an industry that uses gimmicks like cartoon characters to sell sugary snacks and has invaded public schools with infomercials and company branding, as well as the ubiquitous vending machines selling candy and sodas.

This marketing onslaught gets kids’ attention. It affects their food choices and dietary habits, said Wootan, and is linked to the epidemic of childhood obesity.

Parents know this. Children don’t want the bran flakes, they want the technicolor, sugar bombs, cut into pleasing shapes with “Disney princesses on the box.”

The problem with this scale of junk food marketing, said Wootan, is that children have the impression that this is what other kids are eating. That junk is the norm. Consequently, parents struggle on an uneven playing field. “We don’t have Shrek and toy give aways” to promote healthy eating.

While $10 billion is spent every year on promoting junk food, surprisingly only one-tenth of that is spent on television advertising. The majority of spending is on promotions and packaging of kid-oriented food.

There’s a profusion of kids’ magazines with junk food ads, said Wootan, as well as “snack-brand books.” Wootan showed pictures of books with titles such as the “Skittles” counting book, or multiplying using Hershey chocolate squares. “It’s reading as brand loyalty,” said Wootan, dismayed. “And of course, you can eat as you read along!”

Website games, cell phone ring tones set to advertising jingles, toys as ads using “spokes-toons,” are all interactive and insidious forms of marketing aimed at children.

In 2005, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies set forth guidelines stating “Industry should develop and strictly adhere to marketing and advertising guidelines that minimize the risk of obesity in children and youth.”

Health policy organizations such as the IOM and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) as well as a host of other concerned decision makers did not have much luck convincing the industry to voluntarily change its ways.
That is... “Until we sued them,” said Wootan.

Using consumer protection laws already on the books, CSPI sued manufacturers of junk food stating its causality to obesity.

“It worked,” said Wootan. About 70 percent of the industry agreed to adhere voluntarily to certain nutrition standards using a model set forth by the Better Business Bureau. Even still, the guidelines are not as stringent as they should be. For example, on the positive side, they have agreed to not market within elementary schools. On the con side, they still market heavily within junior and senior high schools.

Most worrisome is that these guidelines only cover traditional forms of marketing and do not address the whole burgeoning new media, such as text messaging, interactive games, podcasting, etc.

When reining in the industry through guidelines and lawsuits doesn’t work, CSPI has turned its attention to congressional reform. Presently CSPI is working on the “Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act” (of which Pennsylvania Congressmen Bob Casey and Arlen Specter are co-sponsors). The bill would expand a USDA program to promote fruit and vegetables as school snacks. This act could be good news to farmers hoping to break into their local school food markets.

Regrettably, one of the obstacles to real reform is the USDA itself and its definitions of junk food. Wootan says the USDA is “out of step with the current science” of nutrition and only deems as junk food those foods made from pure sugar. It does not address other factors such as calories, fats, and sodium. Thus, while breathmints are out (all sugar), french fries are in. As are cookies, ice cream, chips, snack cakes, and certain candies (as long as a small percentage of them contain fruit juice).

Wootan is particularly concerned with the targeted marketing to schools. She showed pictures of athletic scoreboards with corporate logos and explained that advertising in schools makes a perverse sort of sense. “You go where the kids are,” says Wootan — and more to the point — where the parents are not.

School marketing associates products with trusted institutions and teachers. It builds brand loyalty and the audience is young, impressionable, and captive.

According to a Washington Post investigative series this week on childhood obesity, one out of three American children are overweight or obese. The Post reports of children experiencing gallstones, joint pain, and Type 2 diabetes, once a rarity in childhood. According to the Post:

“The cumulative effect could be the country’s first generation destined to have a shorter life span than its predecessor. A 2005 analysis by a team of scientists forecast a two- to five-year drop in life expectancy unless aggressive action manages to reverse obesity rates. Since then, children have only gotten fatter.”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest produces a “School Foods Report Card” by state. The majority of states are flunking. (Pa. got an “F”, N.Y. a “D+”). Only two states (Kentucky and Oregon) got As. Where the childhood obesity is more endemic, in the South, the grades were higher than in the North because the South has pushed through policy reform directed at school lunches. The Northern states have a lot of catching up to do.

Wootan was optimistic about the recent Farm Bill and noted that the bill earmarks “one billion in spending to elementary schools for free fruits and vegetables” over the next five years. Wootan described this reform as “huge.”
But that’s still $9 billion less than the junk food industry is spending this year on marketing to America’s children.