|
|
|
You can get e-magazine links on WhatsApp. Click here
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food, ad. giants in US campaign against nutritional guidelines for kids’ foods
|
|
Tuesday, 12 July, 2011, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
|
|
|
The food and advertising giants in the US have launched a determined campaign to derail government efforts to create voluntary nutritional guidelines for foods marketed to American children, who are increasingly growing obese.
Calling themselves the Sensible Food Policy Coalition, the nation’s biggest food-makers, fast-food chains and media companies, are trying to derail standards proposed by four federal agencies, Washington Post reported recently.
Core members of the coalition including General Mills, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo and Time Warner spent $6.6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of this year, disclosure records show. Overall, the coalition’s main members have spent nearly $60 million on lobbying since the start of the Obama administration, the report said.
The guidelines are designed to encourage food-makers to reduce salt, added sugars and fats in foods and drinks targeted to children. If their products did not meet the standards, food-makers following the guidelines would refrain from advertising them to children.
The standards would be voluntary and not regulations; companies would not be required to meet them, and the government would have no way to enforce them, the report said.
Public-health experts say children, many of whom may lack the critical-thinking skills to understand advertising, are bombarded daily by television ads, websites, toy giveaways and cartoon characters promoting junk food. The food and beverage industry spends about $2 billion a year marketing directly to children.
The business community has portrayed the government’s guidelines as job-killing government overreach. Food-makers said the voluntary guidelines are too severe and will prevent them from marketing even relatively healthy foods to children.
Concerned about rising obesity rates among children, Congress in 2009 directed four agencies - the Federal Trade Commission, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department - to propose nutritional standards that food and beverages should meet in order to be marketed to children.
According to some estimates, about one in three American kids and teens is overweight or obese, nearly triple the rate in 1963. "We allow companies into our homes to manipulate children to want food that will make them sick," said Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is leading a coalition of public-health groups, including the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, in support of the guidelines.
The four federal agencies unveiled proposed standards in May and are accepting public comment before finalising them in a report to Congress. Food-makers are saying that the voluntary guidelines could even prevent them from marketing foods such as yogurt and whole-wheat bread.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|