Advertising agencies and U.S. food companies have joined forces and created a lobbying group whose goal is to defend the right to advertise to children, according to the Wall Street Journal. The lobbying group, called the Alliance for American Advertising, is considered to be the most aggressive attempt to deflect government regulation when it comes to advertising foods to kids. Critics have attributed the influx of food advertising to kids to the escalating child obesity rates.
The Alliance for American Advertising is composed of:
The first three food companies on the list are considered food giants among packaged foods to children, particularly in the breakfast cereal arena. Their annual advertising budget of nearly $400 million reflects the hefty amount of time and efforts they put forth toward targeting kids.
According to the president and chief of the American Advertising Federation and an alliance member, the lobbying group was designed to meet two main goals: defend the industry's First Amendment rights to advertise to children and promote its willingness to police their own actions. Members of the alliance voiced disagreement over the possibility of a link between advertising and childhood obesity. They stated they planned on continuing investigation and future studies to determine if there is any relation between the two.
Meanwhile, Kraft Foods has taken the steps to deflect negative backlash and speculations that products such as their Oreo cookies and Kool-Aid drinks could be contributing to childhood obesity by discontinuing their advertising of these products to children under the age of 12.
CNN Money January 26, 2005
You may recall one of the stories I recently ran on: Kraft's "promise" to phase out fast food ads aimed at kids. Kraft can't seem to make up their mind. First they decide to reconsider the health of kids by stopping their advertising to kids under 12 and here they join a group to lessen the involvement of government regulation when it comes to advertising to kids. It just goes without saying that as with most things involving worldwide corporations with BILLIONS of dollars at stake, corporations will take the actions necessary to protect their advertising budgets and number one market, which in this case is your kids.
What is really challenging to believe is their one-page "position statement" in which their lobbying group strongly disputes the connection between the childhood obesity epidemic that's growing by the second in this country and recent advertising trends aimed at children.
Sedentary lifestyles, excessive television and fat-filled child menus are some of the biggest contributors to childhood obesity. Television ads are particularly problematic, especially considering that a typical child sees 40,000 television ads a year.
Kids are easy and impressionable targets for food advertisers, and it's up to the parents to step in and limit the amount of advertising their kids are exposed to each day. How could this be done?
All it takes is one simple step: Turn off the television and encourage your kids to take part in a productive activity like exercise or physically active play. There are far too many things to do in life -- places to visit, books to read, sports to play -- to waste 40 hours a week watching TV. TV is one of the most pernicious influences and I couldn't recommend stopping it more strongly. Not only will it decrease their activity level, but also it will expose your kids to commercials promoting worthless foods.
So if you are a parent, please step up to the plate for your kids and set guidelines as to how much TV they can watch and also encourage them to participate in sports or other physical activities instead of watching TV. Your children may object to the TV restriction now, but they will thank you in the future when they are healthy and their friends are obese and chronically sick.
Interestingly, cutting out the TV will also decrease their risk of going into debt.
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