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The food and beverage industry views children and adolescents as a key market force. As a result, children and adolescents are targeted aggressively by food advertisers. They are exposed to a growing number of advertising, marketing, and commercials through a wide range of avenues. The principal goal of food advertising and marketing aimed at children is to influence certain brands for food purchases among youth. A wide range of food advertising techniques and channels are used to reach children and adolescents to spark brand awareness and encourage product sales.
Creating an environment in which children in the United States grow up healthy should be a high priority for the nation. Yet the prevailing pattern of food and beverage marketing to children represents a missed opportunity, and a threat to the health of the next generation. Children’s dietary and health patterns are shaped by the relationship of many factors. With the growth of the media there is also been a parallel growth with their use for marketing, including the marketing of food and beverage products.
We view food not only by how it tastes but by its nutritional value and what that item means to us. When a person eats, we eat with our minds as much as with our mouths. Numerous studies have shown that foods heavily marketed to preschool and grade school children are predominantly high in sugar and fat, which is not part of healthful eating recommendations for children. They have shown that children exposed to food advertising prefer and choose advertised food products more frequently than those not exposed to such ads.
Purchase request studies with children under age 11 have also found strong associations between number of hours of television watched by children and number of children’s requests to parents for those foods, as well as availability of those food items in the home. Multiple paths are used to reach youth to influence food product purchase behavior. Youth-oriented marketing channels and techniques include television advertising, in-school marketing, product placements, kids clubs, the Internet, toys and products with brand logos, and youth-targeted promotions, such as cross-selling and tie-ins.
The largest single source of media messages about food to children is television. Television viewing starts early, US children between the ages of 2 and 4 years view 2 hours of television daily. Their viewing increases to over 3. 5 hours near the end of grade school, and then drops off to about 2. 75 hours in later adolescence. US children in low-income families and minority youth tend to watch more television. Thus they have greater exposure to food ads. It is estimated that US children may view between 20,000 ??? 40,000 commercials each year and by the time they graduate from high school may have been exposed to 360,000 television ads.
Food is the most frequently advertised product on US children’s television. Food ads account for over 50% of all ads targeting children. Children view an average of one food commercial every five minutes of television viewing time, and may see as many as three hours of food commercials each week which makes this a beneficial advertising outlet. (4) Marketing and advertising play a significant role in behavior for children. Since the 1980s, the food and beverage industry has made children and adolescents the targets of intense and specialized food marketing and advertising efforts.
Children are exposed to multiple food advertisements every day. Foods marketed to children such as highly sweetened cereals to cookies, candy, fast foods, and soda are predominantly high in calories, sugar and fat. With youth, marketers have tapped into an audience that is particularly vulnerable to the messages and tactics of the food and beverage industry. Marketers have capitalized on this situation by using numerous marketing means to reach children and adolescents. Experts feel that the food advertised that children are exposed to through the media may have an impact on unhealthy eating choices.
Studies show that during the time that there has been an increase in childhood obesity, there has also been an increase in the number of advertisements that children are viewing. In the 1970s it is estimated that children viewed about 20,000 television commercials a year, in the 1980s that increased to over 30,000 commercials a year. It is now estimated that children now see an average of over 40,000 television commercials a year. The majority of ads targeted at children are food with candy being 32% of the commercials, cereal at 31% and fast food at 9%.
One study stated that during an hour of Saturday morning programming, children were exposed to 11 food commercials averaging one food commercial every 5 minutes. (4) Marketing to children and adolescents is so pervasive; many child advocates and media experts believe that such marketing escalates a public health problem. Young children are more affected by marketing than adults. Numerous studies show that children under 8 years of age are developmentally unable to understand the intent of advertisements and accept advertising claims as factual.
The intense marketing of high fat, high sugar foods to young children can be viewed as abuse because they do not understand that commercials are designed to sell products and do not have the ability to comprehend or evaluate advertising. The purpose of advertising is to persuade, and young children have few defenses against this advertising. Older children and teens can be manipulated by the strong emotive messages in advertisements. It can be argued that children, especially young children, are a vulnerable group that should be protected from commercial influences that may impact their health.
As a society that values children, there should be greater social responsibility for their present and future health. Social and environmental structures can actively support and promote healthy food choices for children. (3) A strong body of existing research, including a 2006 research review by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, concludes that children’s exposure to television advertising for non-nutritious food products is a significant risk factor contributing to childhood obesity.
The food and beverage industry pledged to voluntarily reduce the advertising of unhealthy foods to children through the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. We cannot win the battle against childhood obesity as long as we continue to allow industry to bombard children with ads for foods that they really shouldn’t eat very often. In 2006, the Council of Better Business Bureaus established the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative as a self-regulation plan.
Companies that took part agreed to devote at least half of their advertising toward children to promote “healthier or better-for-you” foods or to include messages encouraging good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. Food marketing is very big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. The companies have stakeholders to please and satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials and expand sales by marketing to children. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries. 2) No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts. We learn how powerful, intrusive, influential, and invasive big industry is and how alert we must constantly be to prevent it from influencing not only our own personal nutritional choices, but those of our government agencies. In Food Politics, Dr. Marion Nestle argues the food industry determines our food supply and but negatively influences our diet and health in ways invisible to the average consumer.
The food industry is determined on make a profit at the expense of consumer health. A carefully created Food Guide Pyramid highlights the power of food lobbyists over federal guidelines. Companies are able to exert a disproportionate influence over government nutrition policy. Strategies used by the food industry include lobbying and campaign contributions to members of government associated with food regulations. The fact that the very industry charged with supplying our food spends an extravagant amount of money and effort creating non-foods creates a concern as to the influence the food industry has on our nutrition and health.
In a country where activists must fight for Americans’ right to know what we are eating, it’s not exactly news that diet is a political issue. We can no longer be certain that our organic produce has not been contaminated genetically. We no longer know what your produce it being treated with in the “free market” in food today. The United States is the richest nation in the world but we are eating ourselves to death. Food companies encourage people to eat more, even though the key health issues require that we eat less. The US does not produce enough fruit and vegetables for each of us to eat 3 to 5 servings per day, the minimum recommended.
Food politics inspires all politics in the United States. There is no industry more important to Americans, or more fundamentally linked to our well-being and the future well-being of our children. Corporate control of the nation’s food system limits our choices and threatens our health. Studies documented that young children have little understanding of the persuasive intent of advertising. Young children, under the age of 7 tend to view advertising as fun, entertaining, and unbiased information. An understanding of advertising intent usually develops by the time most children are 7-8 years old.
This age group is vulnerable to misleading advertising. The heavy marketing of high fat, high sugar foods to this age group can be viewed as manipulative because young children do not understand that commercials are designed to sell. (1) Product placement is increasing in popularity and becoming more acceptable as a standard marketing channel. It involves including brands in movies in return for money or promotional support. Fees depend on the relative importance of the placement in movies, and are usually around $50,000 to $100,000.
Producers contend that product placement makes sets look more realistic and that brands help define characters and settings. Product placement can help offset production costs. Product placement in the movies first gained attention in 1982 when it was reported that sales of the peanut butter candy Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces increased by 65% within a month due to its placement within E. T. Some corporations have developed kids clubs as a way to communicate with and maintain an ongoing relationship with children. Kids clubs aren’t really clubs, but standard marketing programs with names that imply they are clubs.
Kids clubs permit mass marketing on a personalized basis and members receive direct mailing. In addition they can participate in contests, receive coupons and other items with the club’s logo. Advertisers and marketers have begun to target the rapidly growing number of children online. The forms of advertising and marketing on the Web vary drastically from television commercials. Companies can effortlessly incorporate advertising through their websites. Almost all of the major companies that advertise and market to children have created their own websites, designed for children.
Promotions are a commonly used marketing method for reaching children and adolescents. Cross-selling and tie-ins combine promotional efforts to sell products. The food industry has combined promotional links with Hollywood and Network studios, toy companies, and sports leagues. Premiums and sweepstakes prizes have increased recently and are often used to appeal to children’s and adolescent’s tastes and desires. Premiums provide something free with a purchase. Sweepstakes and contests promise opportunities to win free products. Fast food restaurants typically use premiums in children’s meals, giving away simple toys.
Sweetened cereals also commonly give premiums in the form of toys, cards or games. (4) Youth-targeted marketing and advertising of food products has any impact on children’s food behaviors or body weight. Children exposed to advertising will choose advertised food products at significantly higher rates than children who were not exposed. Children’s exposure to food television advertising increases the number of attempts they make to influence food purchases their parents buy. Also purchasing requests for specific brands of food and how food advertising affects actual food intake. 2) Evidence shows that preschoolers and grade school children’s food preferences and food purchase requests for high sugar and high fat foods are influenced by television exposure to food advertising. Television has impacted children’s attempt to influence their parents at the supermarkets. Studies show that the amount of time children spend watching television is a significant predictor of how often they will request products at the grocery store. As many as three out of four requests were from products viewed on television ads. This proves that the adverting is very successful. 3) It is evident that food advertising that targets children is well-funded and saturates their environment from multiple channels. Much of the non-television advertising, such as the food companies’ web sites, toys, in-school marketing, is indirect and subtle. Food ads on television have an influence on children’s food choices. As children have become an increasingly important target market for the food industry, consumer and child advocate organizations have become increasingly concerned that adequate safeguards should exist to protect children from commercial gain.
Concerns over the effects of advertising to children have raised issues about the need for tighter controls on food advertising to children. In the US, there are currently few policies or standards for food advertising and marketing aimed at children. The advertising industry maintains self-regulatory policies established by the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU). CARU’s guidelines apply to all forms of children’s advertising, but it has no legal authority over advertisers and can only seek voluntary compliance. (3) CARU’s guidelines for children’s advertising include impressive goals.
The guidelines are vague, and not enforceable beyond a limited complaint procedure and voluntary action by companies. The CARU guidelines list seven basic principles, which address areas such as product presentation and claims, endorsement and promotion by program characters, sales pressures, disclosures and disclaimers and safety concerns. It is questionable how well an organization like CARU, can self-regulate the food advertising behavior of its members. Cases take time to build, often by the time a case can be brought, an ad campaign has run its course and the company doesn’t mind pulling it. 4) At a federal level, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) share authority for regulating advertising, although each agency has a different emphasis. The FCC has the responsibility of establishing public interest obligations for television broadcasters, while FTC’s responsibility is to regulate advertising believed to be unfair or misleading. Concerns about advertising on children’s television were first raised in the early 1970s by the children’s advocacy group, Action for Children’s Television (ACT).
They urged the FCC and the FTC to prohibit or limit advertising directed at children. In 1974, the FCC required specific limitations on the overall amount of advertising allowed during children’s programs and clear separation between program content and commercial messages. The FCC also required clear explanation when a program is interrupted by a commercial to help young children distinguish program subject from commercial messages. As a result it became common for television stations to air “bumpers,” such as “We’ll be right back after these commercial messages”.
In 1978, the FTC formally proposed a rule that would ban or severely restrict all television advertising to children. The FTC presented a comprehensive review of the scientific literature and argued that all advertising directed to young children was unfair and deceptive. The proposal motivated intense opposition from the food, toy, broadcasting and advertising industries, who initiated an aggressive campaign to oppose the ban. The companies said they had First Amendment protection for the right to provide information about products to consumers.
Responding to corporate pressure, Congress refused to approve the FTC’s operating budget and passed legislation titled the FTC Improvements Act of 1980 that removed the agency’s authority to restrict television advertising. The act specifically prohibited any further action to adopt the proposed children’s advertising rules. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)) recommended banning ads aimed at young children, as well as limiting commercials for sugary foods directed at older children and requiring that advertisers of sugary foods fund health messages as a balance to their advertisements.
Congress responded by passing a law withdrawing the FTC’s authority to issue industry-wide regulations to combat unfair advertising practices aimed at kids. As a result, the regulations of food advertising aimed at children is now left largely to occasional FTC enforcement actions and are self-regulation by industries with a financial interest in selling food to children. In 1990, children’s advocacy groups persuaded Congress to pass the Children’s Television Act that included limiting the amount of commercial time during children’s programming to 10. 5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays.
These time limits remain in effect today. (4) Although children’s poor diets and rising childhood obesity rates are affected by many factors, one of the most important is food marketing. Studies show that food marketing attracts children’s attention, influences their food choices, and prompts them to request that their parents purchase products. Virtually all of the foods marketed to children are low in nutrients and high in calories, salt, saturated fat, and refined sugars. Parents are at a disadvantage when we try to compete with food companies to try and persuade our kids to eat their fruits and vegetables. 3) Society provides special protection for children, including measures to protect their health. To help protect children from heart disease, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases, we must support parents, whose influence is undermined by the wide discrepancies between what they tell their children is healthful and what marketers promote as desirable to eat. We should limit the promotion of some foods that are now commonly marketed to children. We also should create incentives for companies to develop and increase the demand for foods that are nutritionally better than those that are currently marketed to children. 3) For far too long, food manufacturers, fast-food restaurants, and media conglomerates have been profiting by pushing obesity and disease causing junk foods to kids. It’s time for them to clean up their acts. The increased rate of childhood obesity is one of the most significant public health challenged our country has to face. Many factors contribute to the problem but children’s use of media is an important piece to the puzzle. There are many options to consider that will help to reduce the negative effect media plays on children’s health. Works Cited 1. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.
University of California. revised edition 2007 2. Harris, Jennifer L. , John A. Bargh, and Kelly D. Brownell. “Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior. ” Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior 28. 4 (2009): 404-13. Yale University. Web. http://www. yale. edu/acmelab/articles/Harris_Bargh_Brownell_Health_Psych. pd>. 3. Psychology of food choice. Cambridge, MA: CABI Pub. , 2006. Print. 4. The Henry J Kaiser Foundation. The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity. February 2004. http://www. kff. org/entmedia/upload/The-Role-Of-Media-in-Childhood-Obesity. pdf