Scientists: Stop marketing junk food to kids

"It’s putting our children at risk,” said panel member Ellen A. Wartella, psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.

The report said the food industry should spend its marketing dollars on nutritious food and drinks — and that characters such as SpongeBob, animated star of the Nickelodeon cable TV network, should endorse only good-for-you food.

Some children’s advocacy groups said the recommendations don’t go far enough and called for a ban on junk food marketing to children.

"If marketing to children affects their food choices, then it’s time to stop marketing to them,” said Susan Linn, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School who helped found the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

The report said evidence is limited on whether TV advertising directly causes obesity in children. Still, the evidence was compelling enough to call for a concerted effort to change the nature of foods being marketed to children, panel members said.

The panel said marketing has grown more sophisticated, evolving beyond TV commercials to Internet games, coupons and store events, placement in supermarkets and organized word-of-mouth campaigns.

The panel said growth in new food products targeted to kids has been huge, from 52 in 1994 to nearly 500 introduced last year.

Obesity rates have tripled over the past 40 years for kids and adolescents from ages 6 through 19, raising their risk of risks of type 2 diabetes and a range of other diseases.

Food and beverage companies said they’ve taken many steps the committee recommended, making products healthier, shrinking some package sizes and touting healthy lifestyles.

"The growth in the food and beverage industry is in healthier foods,” said Richard Martin, spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association. "There’s been a sea change in the last couple of years, and I don’t think that’s very well-reflected in this report.”

SpongeBob has helped sell spinach and carrots as part of a Nickelodeon campaign with former President Clinton to get kids to eat healthy food. But SpongeBob also has appeared on ice cream, Pop-Tarts, candy bars, lollipops, Pez, brownies, Rice Krispie treats, macaroni and cheese, cheese crackers and other products.

He has plenty of company on candy shelves, where characters include Arthur, the Cat in the Hat, Bob the Builder, Clifford, Scooby Doo, Elmo, Spiderman and Dora the Explorer, to name a few.

These likeable, kid-friendly characters are "being used to manipulate vulnerable children to make unhealthy choices,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who requested the report.

The panel said the government should try tax breaks and other incentives to encourage the shift away from junk food and, if that doesn’t work, Congress should mandate it.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, questioned whether any healthy-food campaign could match the power of junk-food marketing.

"I don’t think that even the best social marketing on healthy foods can overcome the advertising and sale of breakfast cereals that taste like cookies,” she said.

The panel’s chairman, J. Michael McGinnis, said the panel sees an opportunity in the marketing power of industry.

"There is tremendous creativity to be had in the industry, and if we contemplate as a society banning the marketing to kids, we’re going to lose that creativity,” said McGinnis, a senior scholar at the institute. "We take the industry at their word that they’re interested in providing marketing for more healthful products.

Wally Snyder, president and CEO of the American Advertising Federation, said lack of physical activity also plays a major role in childhood obesity and that his industry is helping educate parents and children about good eating and exercise.

Ordered by Congress, the study was funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a cost of $750,585, according to the Institute of Medicine. An arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the institute is congressionally chartered to advise the government on medical issues.

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