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Self Regulation of Junk Food Ads In the
Spotlight Again as Pressure Mounts
Sarah
Hills
Food Navigator USA
September 24, 2008
Dannon has become the latest company to sign up to a
scheme against junk food ads for children, but it comes
as the kids channel Nickelodeon is accused of mainly
marketing products that are of poor nutritional quality.
Dannon, a leading yogurt producer in the US, had
declined to join the Children’s Food and Beverage
Advertising Initiative when it was first launched in
2006, along with Nestle which also opted out.
It has now become the 15th company to sign up to the
agreement, a few months after Nestle did the same.
Dannon said it had been waiting to ensure that the
pledge its US arm was making to the CFBAI was consistent
with the pledge that Groupe Danone announced at the end
of 2007 before joining.
However, self regulation to ensure products marketed
towards children meet nutritional standards has again
been called into question as analysis by the watchdog
Center for Science in the Public Interest, found that
the overwhelming majority of foods Nickelodeon marketed
were nutritionally poor.
CSPI first analyzed Nickelodeon food marketing to
children in 2005, and found that 88 percent were
nutritionally poor. That same year Nickelodeon told the
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it would use its
characters to promote spinach, oranges, and other health
foods. But advertisements for those foods are now
totally absent from the company’s airwaves and magazine
ads, the CSPI claimed.
This year the CSPI found 79 percent of the foods
marketed to children were foods like sugary cereal,
candy, sugary drinks with little or no fruit juice, and
fast food. And the percentage of food packages sporting
Viacom characters such as SpongeBob contain increasingly
unhealthy foods.
Senate committee
Meanwhile the FTC testified before two subcommittees of
the US Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday about
the results of an FTC study on food marketing to
children and adolescents.
The report analyzed data from 2006, largely before
industry self-regulatory, but the FTC believes it will
provide an important benchmark for measuring the
progress of self-regulatory initiatives.
The commission recommends that all food and beverage
companies adopt and adhere to meaningful nutrition-based
standards for marketing their products to children under
12 and a useful first step would be to join the CBBB
(Council of Better Business Bureaus Initiative)
children’s food advertising scheme.
Similarly all companies should stop in-school promotion
of foods and beverages that do not meet meaningful
nutrition-based standards and media and entertainment
companies should consider instituting their own
self-regulatory initiative.
Advertising and obesity
The idea behind the BBB initiative was to see if
self-regulation could do more to address the concerns
about child-directed food and drink advertising and
childhood obesity.
An estimated 22m children under the age of five are
overweight worldwide, according to the latest World
Health Organization figures. In the USA the number of
overweight children has doubled since 1980.
Dannon has pledged that 100 percent of advertising
directed primarily to children under 12 in television,
radio, print and Internet venues will be for products
that meet nutritional guidelines that BBB has reviewed
and approved.
As part of the pledge, which will be fully implemented
by January 1, 2009, Dannon intends to feature only
products that meet its nutritional guidelines in all
advertising directed primarily to children under 12.
These guidelines are based on the 2005 US Dietary
Guidelines for Americans, among others, for fat, trans
fat, saturated fat and sugar.
For example, the company has pledged that saturated fat
must be less than ten percent of calories or may not
exceed 1g, sodium may not exceed 230 mg, and added
sugars may not exceed 12.5g.
Other participants in the scheme include The Coca-Cola
Company, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft
Foods and Burger King Corp.
Measuring standards
The American Society for Nutrition (ASN) has called for
a more science-based and consistent nutrition standard
for foods marketed to children and adolescents and
expressed caution about the variation between companies
in developing them.
It wants all foods marketed to children aged eight years
and older to meet a “single, science-based nutrition
standard that is consistent with the recommendation in
the 2005 US Dietary Guidelines and the IOM report
Nutrition Standards for Foods in Schools”.
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