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Food ads for kids assailed

Panel urges broad changes in product lines, marketing

Food manufacturers and restaurants should offer healthier food to a nation of increasingly overweight children, a scientific panel recommended Tuesday.

The Institute of Medicine report concludes what most parents already know: Kids who watch a lot of TV ads eat more junk food. Food and beverage marketing to children is "at best, a missed opportunity, and at worst, a direct threat to the health of the next generation," the report warns.

It calls for broad changes in what foods are developed for children and in how they're sold, from using licensed characters to promote only healthy foods to urging restaurants to provide nutritional information on menus. The report's recommendations are intended to create a network that supports parents in their efforts to encourage children to eat healthy foods, whether at school, in the supermarket or while playing online advertising games at food industry Web sites.

"The dominant focus of food and beverage marketing to children is for products high in calories and low in nutrients, and this is sharply out of balance with healthful diets," said Dr. J. Michael McGinnis, chairman of the Institute of Medicine panel.

The committee did not recommend a ban on advertising to children, instead calling for stronger industry self-regulation. But if that doesn't work within two years, Congress should mandate a shift from advertising junk food during children's TV shows to promoting healthful products, it advises.

The food industry already is responding, with many recent changes not reflected in the report, says Richard Martin, vice president for communications for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, adding that the trade group's members have introduced smaller packages and more nutritious foods and beverages for children.

"There's been a sea change," Martin says. "Consumers are increasingly interested in healthier, better-for-you foods, and industry has responded. Healthy foods bring healthy profits."

Panel members praised companies such as Kraft Foods, which this year began emphasizing its more nutritious foods on TV and radio shows and in print media aimed at children ages 6 to 11, and Nickelodeon, which has licensed SpongeBob SquarePants for packages of carrots. But they said more needs to be done by the food industry.

The number of obese children in the United States has tripled in the past three decades, to 16 percent of those ages 6 to 19. An additional 15 percent are considered too heavy.

The report paints a portrait of a society where young children are increasingly likely to influence what foods their parents purchase or to buy it themselves. At the same time, it says, food and beverage makers target children with a disproportionately large number of new products high in fat, calories or sugar and low in nutrients, and spend $10 billion annually marketing them. Advertising has proliferated from traditional, more easily monitored channels like TV and print media to product placement, "advergames" and social networks.

In recent years, other groups, including the American Psychological Association and the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit group that studies health care issues, have called for curbing advertising to children. The Federal Trade Commission recommended banning all TV ads aimed at young children in 1978, a proposal that Congress blocked.

"Focusing on marketing and advertising to some degree misses the mark," Martin said. "It's important that we have this debate, but it should not cause us to take our eye off solutions that will really make a difference: making sure kids get the right amount of physical activity and eat a nutritional, balanced diet, and that parents have the information they need to make the choices for their kids."

Enlisting food manufacturers and advertisers is key to selling children on nutritious choices, panel members said Tuesday.

"We believe there are very creative people in the industry who, if they put their mind to it, could create healthier products for children and develop messages that would encourage them to eat those products.," said Ellen A. Wartella, executive vice chancellor of the University of California, Riverside.

Some businesses report mixed experiences with promoting healthier food. Demand shot up for lower-fat milk and mandarin oranges after Wendy's restaurants added them as options for kids' meals and promoted them heavily, said spokesman Bob Bertini. Orders have dropped off as advertising campaigns have changed, he said, but they're still popular. But the fast-food chain recently dropped a fruit bowl introduced earlier this year because it wasn't selling. He's doubtful about focusing ad campaigns only on nutritious foods.

"If there's a market for those choices, certainly we will emphasize them, as we did with fruit," Bertini says. "We continue to promote a wide cross-section of our menu because we're a mass marketer. We have a large, diverse audience with very different needs."

The $1 million report, requested by Congress and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is billed as the most comprehensive review to date on food and beverage marketing to children. Members of the committee, which includes a psychologist, a children's marketer, a former TV production executive, public health workers and nutritionists, reviewed 200 previously published peer-reviewed articles, as well as industry and marketing data. Their recommendations do not have the force of law, but are considered influential. The Institute of Medicine is a medical adviser to Congress, and its panels set nutritional guidelines that are the basis of much of the government's dietary advice.

Other recommendations include government, school and private sector initiatives such as offering incentives for promoting nutritious choices, devising a social marketing program to sell parents on healthy diets, and setting standards for all foods sold in schools, not just federally funded lunches.

Chris Rosenbloom, a nutrition professor at Georgia State University, pointed to parents as key in any changes.

"I don't think it's easy for parents at all today," she said. "If industry could help them by not going so heavy-handed with their marketing, if parents would then do the next step, I'd say that's a good thing for everybody."