D.C. Pow Wow: Does Marketing to Kids Trigger Obesity?

Have food ads targeted at children played a role in triggering childhood obesity, which has more than doubled since 1970? Is the industry doing an adequate job at self-regulating itself? And what can food companies do to improve their advertising aimed at our nation’s kids?

A government-sponsored workshop with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services tackled these subjects at a July 14 and 15 meeting to focus on Marketing, Self-Regulation, and Childhood Obesity.

Since I wasn’t there, I read the reports with interest. The Washington Post cited a new FTC study that found kids aren’t watching as many food as they used to — they’re seeing 13 food ads a day versus 18 a day in 1977. Naturally, the American Advertising Federation seized upon the new study as evidence that food marketers are not to blame for the steep rise in childhood obesity.

But, Harvard psychologist Susan Linn, founder of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, attributed the drop to the fact that advertisers are promoting their products via packaging, on the Internet in online games, and on popular TV shows such as "SpongeBob SquarePants," which "becomes a whole commercial for tons and tons and tons of junk food."
Linn noted that the advertising industry spent $100 million on marketing to children in 1983 but is now forking over $15 billion, a major portion of that on food advertising. (The Institute of Medicine, in a study released last year, puts the figure at $12 billion.)

Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) — who introduced legislation to regulate junk food advertising to children — noted, in a speech released on his website and that of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, that in 2001, 57 percent of Americans favored restricting children’s food advertising, but in 2004, the number jumped to 73 percent of Americans.
"Food advertising should not be undermining the lessons that responsible parents are teaching their children," Harkin said. "It should not be undermining parents’ authority." 
Finally, Andrew Martin of the Chicago Tribune, in its article "Food Fight Begins Over Children’s Ads," offered perhaps the most comprehensive account of the proceedings. He observed that the industry’s response "reflects an effort to ward off government regulation of advertising aimed at children and a growing consumer demand for healthier products."

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