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.<\/p>\n
We’re relied largely on food corporations to police themselves<\/a> over what kind of food ads they target at young children. But a recent study<\/a> 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<\/a> on the report:<\/p>\n What a company like Kellogg\u2019s regards as an acceptable amount of sugar in a serving of breakfast cereal may not be what a nutrition<\/a>-wise parent would choose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cDespite the industry\u2019s self-regulatory system, the vast majority of food and entertainment companies have no protections in place for children,\u201d said Margo G. Wootan, the center\u2019s nutrition policy director. In the center\u2019s analysis of marketing to children<\/a>, released last November, the highest grade, a B-plus, went to the candy maker Mars<\/a>, which does not market to children under 12 and avoids other gimmicks that attract them. <\/p>\n \u201cIf companies were marketing bananas and broccoli, we wouldn\u2019t be concerned,\u201d Dr. Wootan said. \u201cBut 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.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n Who’s responsibility is it to protect our children from manipulative messaging?<\/p>\n 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.?<\/p>\n Or should government get more involved, like they have with film and video game ratings and food labeling?<\/p>\n