Time to Stop Marketing Food to Kids, Period

That the food indus­try has zero inter­est in children’s health was made painfully clear last year. Four fed­eral agencies—led by the Federal Trade Commission—came together to make rec­om­men­da­tions on food mar­ket­ing to chil­dren. The idea was to improve the food industry’s cur­rent self-serving, hodge-podge sys­tem of nutri­tion stan­dards and rec­om­mend science-based, uni­form, industry-wide guide­lines instead. Numerous stud­ies have demon­strated industry’s approach to be a dis­mal fail­ure. But still, there was never to be reg­u­la­tions, sim­ply a report to Congress rec­om­mend­ing bet­ter vol­un­tary stan­dards, as this blog post from FTC explained. But two years later, Congress brought the effort to a screech­ing halt, thanks to huge out­cry from the food, adver­tis­ing, and media industries.

In an all-out assault, indus­try argued that the pro­posed stan­dards were so strict hardly any­thing could be mar­keted to kids. (Wasn’t that the idea?) They also claimed that the stan­dards would result in a loss of 74,000 jobs, which was later soundly debunked. (These same com­pa­nies argue that reg­u­lat­ing junk food mar­ket­ing to chil­dren is inef­fec­tive; but never mind). But the true chutz­pah award goes to General Mills, which said that the fed­eral pro­posal would result in an increased demand for fruits and veg­eta­bles that would require mas­sive imports. If you don’t believe me, see page 73 of the 109 pages of com­ments sub­mit­ted to the FTC, where they con­clude: “The cost of feed­ing the American pop­u­la­tion would sky­rocket, and American agri­cul­tural pro­duc­ers would suf­fer dev­as­tat­ing losses at the hands of for­eign imports.” OK.

Finally, indus­try argued that the fed­eral rec­om­men­da­tions would vio­late the First Amendment’s free speech clause. Did I men­tion there was never to be any actual reg­u­la­tion, law, or pol­icy required? How could a report vio­late free speech rights? It can’t of course, as this let­ter signed by numer­ous First Amendment schol­ars so elo­quently argued. But logic has never been a pre­req­ui­site to indus­try spin.

Then last December, while we were wait­ing for the final report from the Federal Trade Commission, Congress snuck lan­guage into the mas­sive bud­get bill requir­ing a cost-benefit analy­sis prior to final­iz­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions. (The White House often mis­uses this con­cept to delay all sorts of reg­u­la­tions for polit­i­cal rea­sons.) Of course cost-benefit makes no sense here, since the report was vol­un­tary. How could the FTC pos­si­bly con­duct such a study? Moreover, legally, FTC is an “inde­pen­dent agency” that can­not even be sub­ject so such a require­ment by the White House. But no mat­ter, indus­try doesn’t need the law or logic on their side, just good friends in Congress.

And where was the first lady and her Let’s Move pro­gram dur­ing the melee? Or for that mat­ter, her hus­band? Neither wing of the White House lifted a fin­ger to sup­port the effort at any time. (This in-depth Reuters report from April explains the ugly pol­i­tics there.) No won­der Congress could eas­ily get away with scut­tling the entire effort.

So what are the lessons to be learned from this fail­ure? That’s it’s time we stopped fret­ting over nutri­tion stan­dards for mar­ket­ing to kids and start work­ing on a new strat­egy to elim­i­nate all food mar­ket­ing to young chil­dren, period. It’s time to tell the truth and stop danc­ing around the issue: that it’s immoral and uneth­i­cal to exploit young children’s emo­tional vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. This is what McDonald’s is doing when it tar­gets chil­dren as young as age two, and it doesn’t mat­ter if it’s Happy Meals or spinach.

Young children—under the age of 12—do not have the cog­ni­tive capac­ity to even under­stand how mar­ket­ing works, so such “free speech” should not enjoy First Amendment pro­tec­tion. Under con­sumer pro­tec­tion law, decep­tive mar­ket­ing is not based on the health the prod­uct in ques­tion. It’s sim­ply ille­gal. So why would it mat­ter how many grams of sugar Lucky Charms contains?

The effort to set nutri­tion guide­lines on mar­ket­ing to chil­dren is doomed to fail­ure because it keeps the food indus­try in charge. Food cor­po­ra­tions are happy to have vol­un­tary nutri­tion guide­lines for mar­ket­ing to chil­dren because it pro­vides a handy pub­lic rela­tions tool to keep policy-makers mol­li­fied and dis­tract away from the fun­da­men­tal moral issue. And even government-enforced nutri­tion stan­dards for kids’ mar­ket­ing would not work. From a prac­ti­cal stand­point, it’s impos­si­ble to over­see and enforce. But more impor­tantly, it’s wrong legally and morally and sets a ter­ri­ble prece­dent. We sim­ply have to stand up for what’s right.

What we need now is a polit­i­cal move­ment in this coun­try to forge this new direc­tion. We can build a strong coali­tion of groups, includ­ing the American Public Health Association and many oth­ers to demand account­abil­ity from the President and newly elected Congress, which now includes a few more pro­gres­sive mem­bers. It’s time to tell the junk food indus­try: enough is enough, stop exploit­ing our kids.

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/