Who’s responsibility is it to protect kids from bad food?
As a father of a 3 year-old girl, advertising to children frightens the heck of out me. I see how much she picks up – even from the “underwriting” spots of Sunmaid raisins and Chucky Cheese slipped in between educational programs on PBS Kids. Corporations spend billions of dollars a year in advertising. And, understandably, they want to sell more units, not keep my daughter healthy.
We’re relied largely on food corporations to police themselves over what kind of food ads they target at young children. But a recent study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest concludes that almost three-quarters of those companies fail to protect young children from exposure to aggressive marketing of food with low nutritional value. According to a New York Times article on the report:
What a company like Kellogg’s regards as an acceptable amount of sugar in a serving of breakfast cereal may not be what a nutrition-wise parent would choose.
“Despite the industry’s self-regulatory system, the vast majority of food and entertainment companies have no protections in place for children,” said Margo G. Wootan, the center’s nutrition policy director. In the center’s analysis of marketing to children, released last November, the highest grade, a B-plus, went to the candy maker Mars, which does not market to children under 12 and avoids other gimmicks that attract them.
“If companies were marketing bananas and broccoli, we wouldn’t be concerned,” Dr. Wootan said. “But instead, most marketing is for sugary cereals, fast food, snack foods and candy. And this junk-food marketing is a major contributor to childhood obesity.”
Young children see thousands of food-related advertisements a year, even if they watch limited amounts of TV. Their brains are not yet trained to filter these messages out as what they are, deeply seated persuasions to buy. Heck, many of our adult brains aren’t trained to do this.
Who’s responsibility is it to protect our children from manipulative messaging?
Is it just us parents who shouldn’t be allowing our kids to watch TV? Is it even possible for parents to shield their children from these messages, what with billboards, magazine and newspaper ads, flyers left on the windshield, aggressive placement of sugary cereal at a toddlers eye-level in the grocery store, etc.?
Or should government get more involved, like they have with film and video game ratings and food labeling?
With childhood obesity shaping up to be one of the great health care challenges of the 21st century, it seems to me we can’t afford – literally – not to take this issue more seriously.
Just like teaching our children to look both ways before they cross the street, we need to explain that there are good foods and bad foods and we need to start that explanation as soon as they are old enough to understand. It's mom and dad's responsibility to lookout for the children and make sure they are eating healthy foods. If it's up to the food industry — forget it. They're all about the almighty dollar and nothing else.
The answer is easy, easy, easy.. It's the parents, parents, parents!! Everyone does a soft shoe around this issue. Whatever happened to taking personal responsiblity?
While I agree it's the responsibility of parents to educate their children about proper eating habits, I would suggest viewing the POV show "Food, Inc." that was televised last night on PBS to enlighten yourself further about what "Agri-business" is doing to our food supply in the name of profits. My point is that the deck is heavily stacked against parents. It isn't just mass marketing, advertising, etc. that's at fault. It's also the fact that our food sources, for the most part, are making us obese and sick.
I believe that tax policy should be used to promote good public policy. It should be used to incentivize good behavior and wise decisions. I think the problem with the fat tax is that it gets that backwards: it's punishing bad behavior rather than rewarding good behavior. That always creates a backlash. We offer massive public subsidies to farm products used to create crap. We should re-jigger those subsidies so they're used to support products that are good for us, including organic. Making bad food more expensive makes everyone resentful because people still have to spend a lot on the good food to replace it. You can know something is good for you but if you can't afford it, so what. Making our system of subsidies more sane do more than discourage people from bad food, it would encourage them toward good food.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e201310f82248d970cTo wit, this graphic shows that nutritionists recommend that fruits and vegetables be approximately 36% of our diet but they receive less than 0.4% of federal farm subsidies.Meat and dairy should be approximately 24% of our diet but receive nearly 74% of federal farm subsidies.
Oops, the link was cut off. Try this…http://bit.ly/aumqZK
It is the government's responsibility to protect children from bad food.
The parents have the responsibility obviously. They are the ones doing the grocery shopping and thus have control over what most of their kids eat. If you don't bring the junk into the house you solve most of the problem. Set a good example by eating healthy and it would solve alot of the obesity epidemic in this country. It would also help with the healthcare crisis. This is a no brainer.
Jeesh, comon' folks! It's Mom and Dad's responsibility. Educate your kids, be firm (I wasn't with the first 2 and am paying the price) and use your best judgment. Taxes and subsidies should have no place in this discussion. Food is expensive enough already, lets not let bureaucrats raise the price even more to try and get us to eat what they think we should.
Turn off the freaking TV!And when it is on, tell your kids that advertising is there for no other reason than to take their money. And that the food that's advertised on TV is crap.Has worked well for me.
It's parents!One step to solving the problem is to get rid of school lunches. Make everyone, teachers included, brown bag it.This would save money too.No lunches and no breakfasts.Parents should feed their kids.If they don't arrest them for child abuse.