Friday, June 17

 
Food Marketers' Self-Regulation a Failure?

This article from AdAge.com reviews complaints by the citizen group Center for Informed Choices, which wants the Federal Trade Commission to get tough on food marketers.

The group's comments come a few weeks before the FTC's first two-day workshop investigating causes of childhood obesity.

It's the old debate -- who's responsible for fat kids? I can assert as the parent of a 10-year-old, who mixes both sedentary play and vigorous physical activity, that the responsibility starts with the parents, who have the final say over what goes into the grocery cart.

In this debate, though, the parents seem to be silent while the war rages between two camps who aren't really invested in the target audience, the kids.

Like so many public debates today, this argument has no final answer because the two sides are arguing different cases. The childhood-obesity people criticize food marketers and manufacturers for "pushing" junk food on kids, but the marketers and manufacturers are looking at what will sell. Each side answers to a different audience.

The last time I checked, food manufacturers were not making kid-friendly products out of the goodness of their hearts but because they know kids will buy, or ask to have their parents buy, those foods. Is that bad? Only if the parents are irresponsible enough to buy their kids anything they demand without regard to diet or healthful qualities.

Parents should demand that food manufacturers clean up their acts, limit the amount of added sugar, salt and fat. But will they stop buying what's out there? Probably not.

How successful has the apple-dipper side item been for McDonald's? Purists would argue it's not much better than french fries because the dipper is almost all sugar. I prefer to look at it as a way to get kids to eat apples.

Parents need to support efforts, however meager, by mainstream food marketers to present more healthful foods, and to seek out smaller manufacturers who do produce higher-quality foods. Or they could start doing more of their own baking, cooking and snack-making.

But the debate will go on. The advocates and the manufactuers will continue to issue self-serving proclamations, charges and counter-charges, and parents will keep buying their kids Happy Meals and Big Kid Meals.
posted by Unknown 7:47 AM