“For the first time in modern history, we have a generation of children whose life expectancy may be lower than that of their parents,” says Patti Miller, vice president of the nonpartisan research and advocacy organization Children Now and a leading advocate for creating a healthier media environment for children. “While many factors contribute to this public health crisis, there is no question that it is being exacerbated by junk food marketing targeted at children.”

American companies spend some $15 billion a year on advertising and marketing to children under age 12. Many of those ads are for fast food, junk food and sugared cereals. “Research shows that young children are uniquely vulnerable to commercial persuasion,” Miller explains. “Children under the age of 8 don’t recognize the persuasive intent of ads and tend to accept them as accurate and unbiased. Children ages 4 and under cannot consistently discriminate between program content and advertising. In fact, research shows that 30-second commercials influence food preferences in children as young as 2 years old. ”

Obesity prevention advocates see junk food marketing as a large part of the unhealthy food environments that contribute to childhood obesity. “When you talk about obesity you are aiming at individuals, but when you talk about environments, you involve everyone—and policies, too,” says George Flores, M.D., senior program officer with The California Endowment and leader of the foundation’s obesity prevention work. “Preventing obesity is not only about stopping unhealthy behaviors, but also about creating conditions that foster healthy behaviors. We need policies that make healthy choices easier choices.”

new media, new threats

Television has been the main outlet for food marketing, but children are also consuming advertising through new and emerging technologies—the Internet, video games, cell phones. “The challenge for parents is that we grew up in an age when it was all about TV,” says Miller. “Now we need to look at other forms of media and new tactics that are falling under the radar screen.”

Eighty-five percent of the top food brands that use television advertising now also use new media, according to a 2006 report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. These include not just online ads, but things like advergames (Internet games that feature specific products), webisodes (TV-like episodic stories using branded characters), and so-called viral marketing.

According to a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, some 93 percent of youths in the United States are on the Internet. This allows food marketers to go beyond the 30-second television commercial and engage children on immersive Web sites that can increase their exposure to the advertised products. A 2006 Wall Street Journal article quoted creators of advergames as saying that a typical player spends 30 minutes on a site and often replays the games.

“This level of exposure is not only unprecedented but completely out of earshot of parents,” says Lori Dorfman, director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG). “The Institute of Medicine was concerned about the effects of food marketing when 30-second TV ads were the main event. What can we expect now, as Web sites engage children with brands for half an hour at a time?”

A report published by BMSG and partially funded by The Endowment, Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age, documents marketers’ new strategies and concludes: “With the explosion of digital media we are witnessing a further expansion of food marketing, designed to intrude into every possible ‘touchpoint’ of a young person’s daily life. Such an environment makes it very difficult for children to maintain health. In many ways these trends have stacked the deck against them.”

public policy for a "brave new world"

Stricter parameters on such advertising could limit children’s exposure to unhealthy foods. “There’s a ‘sweet spot’ here where the public might be willing to support regulation of marketing to children,” says Flores.

But new media make controlling the food marketing environment more difficult. The Federal Communications Commission regulates television advertising to a certain extent—the “separation principle” requires advertising to be clearly separated from programming, and the Children’s Television Act limits how much advertising can appear during children’s shows—but regulations have not kept up with innovation. “It’s a whole ‘Brave New World’ of advertising to kids,” says Miller. “We have to ensure that these rules are updated for the digital age.”

Some obesity prevention advocates are looking beyond the FCC to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is responsible for federal consumer protection laws, to help their cause. “The First Amendment protects the rights of individuals to speak not only politically and religiously, but also commercially,” says Kelly Brownell, co-founder and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. “Meanwhile there’s very little protection of consumers. There are only very limited conditions under which marketing can be curtailed.” One of those conditions is advertising deemed “unfair and deceptive” under FTC rules.

“Is junk food marketing to children unfair? Yes,” insists Brownell, “because it induces them to eat a diet that’s unhealthy for them. Is food marketing to children deceptive? Yes — for example, when the word ‘fruit’ is used on a product it should mean there is real fruit in it. And a cereal that’s half its weight in sugar should not be called ‘part of a nutritious breakfast.’”

Author of 14 books and one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2006, Brownell says the government’s under-funding of nutrition education means that children today get most of their nutrition information from food companies. “As savvy as kids might become through education, the industry will become even more savvy.”

transforming the food environment

The food industry has established voluntary guidelines for their marketing, and this year, Children Now will undertake a major study—supported by The Endowment — to measure whether companies’ compliance has resulted in meaningful change. “We are willing to work with industry to achieve change through voluntary measures,” says Miller, who is one of the facilitators of the FCC’s new Task Force on Media and Childhood Obesity. “Otherwise we are ready to pursue legislative and regulatory solutions.”

And though the food marketing environment is in a dire state, advocates are up for the challenge with or without industry cooperation. “We don’t just want to teach kids to beat the odds,” says Flores. “We want to change the odds.”

for more information

Berkeley Media Studies Group
www.bmsg.org
Children Now
www.childrennow.org
Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, Yale University
www.yaleruddcenter.org

Focus On Patti Miller

Patti Miller loves television, and has since she was a child. “You couldn’t get me away from Mr. Rogers,” she recalls when asked to name her favorite program growing up in Cupertino, Calif.

Miller dreamed of becoming a network news producer and earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communications at the University of California at Berkeley. Following a series of college internships at local television stations, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work at CBS News.

But something was missing. “At CBS, as much fun as it was, I would ask myself: We’re spending 18 hours a day here but—given the time constraints and the economic constraints of the news business—are we really educating people?” She realized she was more interested in using media as an educational tool, and decided to head back to school.

In a master’s degree program at Stanford’s school of education, Miller focused on education and mass media, and went to work for a San Francisco-based research firm evaluating children’s television programming for PBS. Miller is now vice president of the Children & Media Program at Children Now, where she oversees independent research projects. Among other successes, her six-year effort to secure new public interest rules for digital television—involving intense negotiations on Capitol Hill, at the Federal Communications Commission, and with children’s media companies—will expand children’s educational programming and provide new advertising protections for children.

“Society has reached a tipping point in realizing that obesity is a health crisis and how media plays a role,” says Miller. “There’s a realization that we have to do something. I’m optimistic looking at the number of policymakers playing a leadership role and at companies that are taking steps in the right direction. We need to capitalize on that positive direction.”