On any Saturday morning of cartoon-watching, millions of children are also sitting through colorful, exciting ads for McDonald’s, Pop Tarts, sodas, and more.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average American child sees about 40,000 commercials a year—many devoted to selling fast food, candy, soda, and sugary cereals.

“It’s impossible to avoid junk food marketing aimed at your children,” says Margo Wootan, mother of a six-year-old and director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “The marketing is just everywhere you go—it’s on TV, in the grocery store, in their school, on the Internet.”

And being exposed to thousands of ads for high-calorie, sugary, or fatty foods may be linked to childhood obesity. A study released last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that kids who spend more time in front of the television may be obese, not because they aren’t exercising, but because they are being exposed to “billions of dollars worth of food advertising... year after year.”

Kids are influenced by junk food commercials full of “action, friends, and excitement,” says Susan Linn, a Harvard Medical School psychiatry instructor, in her book, Consuming Kids. Linn points out that favorite TV characters, like Scooby-Doo and the Teletubbies, are also used to promote junk food.

Official concern

Over the last two decades, the number of obese children in America has more than doubled, according to the American Obesity Association. About 15 percent of U.S. children are obese today. Evidence of growing concern includes:

• A major study of the effects of food marketing launched by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control

• A report by the World Health Organization describing strong evidence of a link between junk food marketing and childhood obesity and calling on governments to discourage ads that promote unhealthy eating by kids

• A call by the European Union for an end to junk food ads targeted at kids under 12

• The HeLP America Act, introduced last year by U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D, Iowa), to restore the federal government’s power to limit advertising to kids—that power was taken away as part of the deregulation movement in the 1980s.

• The American Psychological Association’s (APA) recommendation to restrict ads that target children under eight. The APA points to research showing that kids under eight cannot fully understand advertisers’ messages and motives and are likely to accept the messages as truthful.

Campaign for change

So far, however, says Wootan, the federal government has done little about obesity. The reason, she says, is “a lack of political will to go up against the food industry, which is well connected and influential.” Major food manufacturers including Kraft, Kellogg’s, and General Mills recently formed the Alliance for American Advertising to “defend the right to advertise to children,” reports the Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood.

To help build “political will” to limit junk food ads, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in 2003 published Pestering Parents: How Food Companies Market Obesity to Children. Last January CSPI released guidelines for responsible food marketing to children.

Wootan predicts it will take five years to pass the HeLP America Act. She calls on parents to get involved by letting their senators and congressional representatives know their views on marketing junk food to kids.

What YOU can do

From Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood,

by Susan Linn

At home

• Limit your children’s time in front of the television.
• Spend time with your kids doing things other than watching TV—art projects, sports, board games, community service, etc.
• Talk with your kids about your views on advertising.
• Before you take your kids to the store, tell them what you will and won’t be buying.

In your community

• Educate yourself. (See Resources)

• Educate other parents. You can download fact sheets from the Campaign for a Commerical-Free Childhood at www.commercialexploitation.org/ and from California’s Strategic Alliance at www.eatbettermovemore.org. It may be easier to set limits on media for your children as a group of parents acting together.

• Ask your senators to cosponsor the HeLP America Act and your congressperson to introduce a similar bill in the House of Representatives.

• Form a local chapter of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. CCFC has tips to get you started at www.commercialexploitation.org/.

Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood

Seeing Teletubbies, a public television program for babies, partner with McDonald’s and Burger King “catapaulted me into activism,” says psychologist Susan Linn. She co-founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), a coalition of health care professionals, parents, educators, and others concerned with the harmful effects of marketing on children. Linn says these effects include eating disorders, erosion of creative play, materialistic values, and more.

CCFC works to educate policy makers and the public about the issue and hopes concerned people will form local chapters of its organization. So far one group has formed, inspired by a talk Linn gave last year at the Unitarian Church in Davenport, IA.

Church member and mother Joyce Wiley says when she heard Linn talk she was shocked by the amount of money advertisers spend on marketing to children—$15 billion a year—and marketers’ encouragement of unhealthy eating habits. And, says Wiley, marketing to children is “undermining the healthy values that children need to grow up with.”

Her group has been training more than a dozen of its members on topics like obesity, advertising methods, and marketing in schools. After training, members plan to give talks on the issue to preschool parents, psychologists, and church groups. Later on, Wiley says, they might get involved in supporting legislation.

Resources

Publications

• Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, by Susan Linn, The New Press 2004
• Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, by Juliet B. Schor, Scribner, 2004
• “The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity,” Kaiser Family Foundation, www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia022404pkg.cfm
• “Guidelines for Responsible Food Marketing,” Center for Science in the Public Interest, http://cspinet.org/marketingguidelines.pdf

Organizations

• Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, 617-278-4172, www.commercialexploitation.org
• Center for Science in the Public Interest, 202-332-9110, www.cspinet.org
• Strategic Alliance to Promote Healthy Food and Activity Environments (California), 510-444-7738, www.eatbettermovemore.org