Push grows to limit food ads to children
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff | April 18, 2005

Concerned about widespread childhood obesity, health advocates and politicians are intensifying pressure on the food industry to limit or even eliminate marketing targeted at children for sugary and fattening products.

Some companies already have responded by pulling ads during children's television programs. More broadly, the food industry will negotiate voluntary restrictions on ads with federal regulators this summer. But the industry also plans to lobby against legislation that would give the government the authority to restrict commercials during children's shows.

Food advertising to youngsters is big business, with the industry spending $10 billion last year trying to shape the tastes of children, according to congressional researchers. The marketing effort, with pop culture icons such as Ronald McDonald and Cap'n Crunch, has become one of the most contentious aspects of the nation's struggle with obesity.

Scientists have not found conclusive evidence that exposure to food advertising leads to childhood obesity, although a recent spate of studies has provided support for a link. The research has been enough to convince a wide spectrum of physicians and health advocates -- even the influential Institute of Medicine, a scientific group that advises Congress -- that food ads directed at children are partly to blame for the soaring number of overweight American children.

It is clear that children have extensive exposure to advertising. Recent studies estimated that the typical child views about 40,000 television ads annually, and more than half of child-targeted advertising is for candy, sugary cereals, or fast foods. Some health advocates contend that the reach of the ads has grown through the Internet, where many children play video games adorned with products, such as a golf game on a Nabisco site in which players aim at Oreo targets.

''Marketing to children has escalated exponentially since the 1980s, and its rise mirrors the rise of childhood obesity," said Susan Linn, a psychologist who is associate director of the Media Center at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston.

The focus of the effort to limit food advertising to children is in Washington, where Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, plans to introduce a bill this month that would allow broad regulation of advertising to children on television, the Internet, and elsewhere -- a power that Congress sharply limited three decades ago, despite allowing continued broad regulation of commercials during programs aimed at adults.

The food industry opposes the measure, arguing that self- regulation would be more effective while also maintaining companies' right to free speech.

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