Nickelodeon — which has been besieged by criticism for its history of promoting and marketing such nutrient-lacking foods such as sugary cereal, candy, and ice cream– is beginning to see the light, so to speak.
The popular children’s entertainment channel now plans to plop popular cartoon characters on packages of produce, the result of a licensing agrement reached with fruit firm Summeripe Worldwide.
Specificially, starting in spring 2007, you’ll be able to see Nick’s beloved SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora The Explorer on loose and packaged fresh, yellow and white flesh peaches, plums and nectarines, FoodNavigator.com reported.
Adding the Nick favorites to fruits and veggies "will make the produce aisle even more kid-friendly," said Sherice Torres, vice president, Nickelodeon & Viacom Consumer Products.
You gotta love the next quote from Torres: "Nickelodeon is committed to encouraging kids to eat right and make healthy food choices."
Wait a minute. Isn’t this the same company cited in a proposed lawsuit for marketing junk food to children? You got it.
Whether coincidental or not — you draw your own conclusions — earlier this year, as I observe in my upcoming book SUGAR SHOCK!, two consumer groups, along with some parents, threatened media
conglomerate Viacom, Nickelodeon’s parent company, and Kellogg (the cereal company) with a lawsuit for promoting nutritent-poor food to our nation’s unsuspecting young.
Indeed, on Jan. 28, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood blasted Kellogg and Nick for "directly harming kids’ health since the overwhelming majority of food products they market to children are high in sugar, saturated and trans fat, or salt, or almost devoid of nutrients."
Well, whatever the reason, it’s good to see Nick now using its popular characters to promote veggies and fruits rather than just junk food.
By the way, attaching SpongeBob and Dora The Explorer to products is one heck of a lucrative business, currently bringing in around $ 1 billion each year in branded goods, according to estimates.
While the Nick characters are on lots of junk food, they’ve also been added recently to fresh baby carrots, clementines, apples, pears, cherries, spinach and organic edamame.