New Study Slams Food Marketing to Children

[Mottmott]

I doubt anyone would argue against personal responsibility in raising our children or our own lives, certainly I would not. But a countervailing force in our society is that our control of our circumstances is all too often limited. I was lucky when raising my children to be able to send them to a fine private school where everyone’s goal was a sound mind and sound body. My grandchildren go there today. When I occasionally go there to pick them up after school, I note that I do not see any obesity there among these privileged children beyond an occasional pre-puberty pudge the next growing spurt will obliterate. Accident? I don’t think so. These children come from families that have control over many of the circumstances of their lives that all too many others do not. This school has an in house cafeteria with control over the lunch menu and the resources for very active athletics and arts programs that require all children participate. And when they go home, it’s to a family that not only afford a balanced nutritious diet, but know what it is.

I don’t believe a sense of personal responsibility alone is enough to ensure our children’s welfare, we also need the personal power and resources to control the environment in which they live. Many children live in families that can barely afford to feed, clothe, and transport their children to school. It’s not reasonable to expect that families in that situation can overcome the societal structures that make it difficult to always make wise choices and see that our children make wise choices. Indeed, it may even be difficult for many to know what a wise choice would be. Those of us fortunate that our families made the kinds of choices that enable us to make wise choices should be more charitable in our attitude towards those who are less fortunate. I think society as a whole, and that includes government, should make it easier for families to raise healthy and well educated children. Coca Cola’s responsibility to increase the wealth of it’s shareholders does not obliterate a society’s responsibility to increase the well-being of all it’s children (not just those who are fortunate enough to have parents whose parents made wise choices). We need countervailing forces that limit the ability of corporations to impeded the effectiveness of parental responsibility.

[Patrick S]

The cigarette comparison is quite obviously strained. So far as we know, there is no way to smoke regularly without impacting your health and increasing your risk of death.[...]

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Are you positive about that? In every case? Aren't there examples of smokers who live healthy lives and die in their 90s?

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I wasnt very clear. I'm talking about risk, which of course is a probability. A stuntman may pull off a whole career with no broken bones, but jumping over schoolbuses still increased their risk of breaking a bone.

We know that not everyone is equally susceptible to health effects from smoking, and yes some smokers will live to 100, not develop cancer, heart disease, or chronic obstructive breathing disorders. At the current time, we can't tell in advance who will get sick and who won't, but we can do is look at populations of smokers with different smoking habits, and compare them to a control population that is similar but doesn't smoke. When we look at populations who are very light smokers, we still find that risk of premature death and cancer is elevated compared to the nonsmoking controls (e.g. Bjartveit and Tverda, 2005). So I would say, yes every smoker is increasing their risk, even though many if not most smokers will not have a major bad health outcome.

Bjartveit and Tverda, 2005. Health consequences of smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day. Tobacco Control 14:315-320.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

These are four-year-olds.  They believe in Santa Clause.  They're not quite ready for rhetorical training.  They just want to eat what that cool kid ate on TV.

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Yeah, and my teenagers want a hooker.

Feeding your kid a Happy Meal once in a while is not going to kill them. If you give them what they're screaming for to shut them up, you are not a bad parent. You are a lazy one. Everyone has those moments. But to actually live that way is your choice, your responsibility, and the fallout from those choices is not the fault of the big bad corporations.

Advertising to children is advertising to parents. If McDonald's or Nabisco was picking up vanloads of children and trucking them off for a junk food binge four times a week, well, that would be a different story.

Who will deem what is and is not directed to children? Who will make the decisions, and what else will be deemed acceptable and unacceptable marketing to various other groups?

Time to take a breath.

Edited December 9, 2005 by FabulousFoodBabe (log)

[Daniel]

The cigarette comparison is quite obviously strained. So far as we know, there is no way to smoke regularly without impacting your health and increasing your risk of death.[...]

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Are you positive about that? In every case? Aren't there examples of smokers who live healthy lives and die in their 90s?

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In terms of impacting ones health, that can be measured.. But someone can have their chances of dieing increased without actually dieing.. Like a drunk driver is increasing his chances of dieing, but might get home safely.. Haha. I dont know if this will make sense after the wine wears off..

[Patrick S]

One interesting conclusion of the IOM report that hasn't been mentioned is that "the current evidence is not sufficient to arrive at any finding about a causal relationship from television advertising to adiposity." What would be really interesting is to have two populations, similar in most relevant respects except that one limits or bans food advertising to kids. If advertising has a causal role in obesity, then the nonexposed population should be less obese. And the magnitude of the difference in obesity rates between the two populations would be a measure of how strong an influence advertising has on obesity.

According to some experts, such real-world test cases already exist, in the form of Sweden and Quebec. A 2004 BBC article says:

Those opposed to any outright ban on food advertising are quick to point to the experience of Sweden and the Canadian province of Quebec.

Both have strict laws outlawing food ads which target children.

However, Sweden has similar obesity rates to the UK. Quebec has similar obesity rates to the rest of Canada, where there is no such law.

'No impact'

"The bans have had no impact whatsoever on obesity rates," says Dr Ashton.

"Some people might want to say that Sweden and Quebec are not typical of the UK. That may indeed be the case.

"But they are the only live experiments on real people that we have and they have not shown any benefit."

Edited December 9, 2005 by Patrick S (log)

[kellycolorado]

[rant]I just wish I could put on a cartoon for my daughter without the endless parade of character licensed junk food (and junk toys, but that's another topic).

Everyone is free to bring what they want or don't want into their homes, but marketing execs know that the kids are going to relentlessly beg for this crap just because it has Dora or Chicken Little on it. Kids at this age don't know the difference between truth and marketing. I just with they'd restrict the TV commercials for junk to the preteens and above shows. Is that too much to ask?

[/rant]

-Kelly

[JohnL]

[rant]I just wish I could put on a cartoon for my daughter without the endless parade of character licensed junk food (and junk toys, but that's another topic). 

Everyone is free to bring what they want or don't want into their homes, but marketing execs know that the kids are going to relentlessly beg for this crap just because it has Dora or Chicken Little on it.  Kids at this age don't know the difference between truth and marketing. I just with they'd restrict the TV commercials for junk to the preteens and above shows.  Is that too much to ask?

[/rant]

-Kelly

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Herein lies the problem.

You use the term "junk"--who would determine what "junk" is?

That's a value judgement that should be made by parents on an individual basis--not by government.

Kids get lots of messages--from many sources--TV, peers, parents,teachers, etc. it would be folly to try to control every message to create a "perfect" world. That to me is far more frightening.

What kids need--and Pan touched on this above--is to arm kids with some perspective and knowledge to be able to deal with life. When they are very young, parents need to control how much TV they watch and to say No--to set parameters and rules.

Unfortunately we have created a "no fault" world where personal responsibility is being turned over to others. Whenever we struggle with a tough decision, we tend to want to pass it off--parents wouldn't have to say no if twinkies were banned--easy.

Parents wouldn't have to regulate how much TV kids were watching if kids programs were banned or if TV programs were "sanitized."

Parents are the people who should "raise" kids--not the government.

A twinkie isn't responsible for obesity in kids--parents who don't see that their kids get exercise, parents who let kids sit in front of a TV set for several hours a day, parents who don't say no when kids ask for things they shouldn't have, parents who fail to teach moderation, parents who allow kids to play video games endlessly, parents who don't discuss what children are doing with them, parents who don't teach good eating habits....

No one ever said that being a parent was an easy job--it is the single most important job--the quality of our future depends upon it. I just refuse to accept the complaint that "My kid is obese, that's not my fault--it the MacDonald's corporation!"

[zennenn]

Foodbabe mentioned:

Advertising to children is advertising to parents. If McDonald's or Nabisco was picking up vanloads of children and trucking them off for a junk food binge four times a week, well, that would be a different story.

I had heard about this program a while ago:

Book it!

Pizza Hut will give your child pizza if they read. Not excatly picking up your kids, but a great incentive, don't you think? I know their program has wonderful intentions, and that bit is just one part of the whole program, but there you are!

Also within the boundaries of a captive audience is cola companies who give monetary incentives to schools if they will host vending machines in the schools. I know sodas are really big with kids while in school. And there are no parents at school to say no . . .

I agree with everyone who has said the right choices start at home, but even the most careful HOME eating and education cannot prevent children from binging on whatever junk they've been stimulated to want as soon as they are away from their parent's watchful eye.

I have many nieces and nephews, and they were raised the same way I was - no junk food in the house, no sugary cereals, etc. But as soon as they were able to buy something on their own, they bought junk. They looked forward to eating junk as soon as they could, at friends' houses, at college. Did this lead to obesity? No, our family is lucky to tend to the thin side. If we didn't, I think many of them would be in trouble right now, struggling with their weight. I know that they didn't feel the greatest when they were in college and they were eating junk just because they could!

It took several years before they slowly started to revert to the eating practices of their childhood. And they are still not there completely. I find it very interesting how strongly the advertising affected them.

For my own part, I looked forward to babysitting gigs because the kid's parents always had junk food snacks for me that I wasn't allowed to have at home.

Just food for thought - I had noticed most people were focusing on home and parental controlled food choices.

[Busboy]

These are four-year-olds.  They believe in Santa Clause.  They're not quite ready for rhetorical training.   They just want to eat what that cool kid ate on TV.

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Advertising to children is advertising to parents.

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If the advertising was aimed at me, wouldn't it be on the shows that I watch, not the shows aimed at 7-year-olds?

[Patrick S]

Also within the boundaries of a captive audience is cola companies who give monetary incentives to schools if they will host vending machines in the schools. I know sodas are really big with kids while in school. And there are no parents at school to say no . . .

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What kids can eat and drink at school is an entirely different issue, but I definitely think that restricting the types of foods that can be marketed in schools is fair and rational. I have complete control over what my kids eat for breakfast and dinner, but I can't be sure she doesn't spend her lunch money on doughnuts at school!

[JohnL]

Zennenn

good points and all very valid IMOP.

However, we simply can not 'sanitize" the world and create a utopia where everyone is thin and healthy--the cost is far too great and how many of us really want that?

Kids will be kids.

I am all for reasonable regulations (I support traffic laws) schools should teach nutrition and have good foods available.

Banning things rarely works--remember prohibition?

Kids will sneak off to MacDonalds and eat Doritos and drink Coke--if they are getting exercise and having a good breakfast and dinner at home as well as information about health and nutrition they should be just fine!

If we do not teach and train kids to be responsible when it comes to good eating habits and to deal with advertising messages and health and hygene issues..... then what happens when they have to deal with drugs and sex and......

It's all about preparing them to make choices.

[Carrot Top]

I just with they'd restrict the TV commercials for junk to the preteens and above shows.  Is that too much to ask?

-Kelly

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It can become an even bigger problem when the kids are that age, Kelly. The questions and concerns that every pre-teen and teenager has to face daily, along with their parent(s), are enormous and often definitive to a point of "who they will be" when they do reach this shaky thing called "adulthood".

........................................................

This is a question of ethics. We are a society that values the dollar. These products rake in the dollar for their producers, and for all the people involved in the industry attached to it. America loves the dollar. But are these products making us unhealthy? Overweight? Are these products value for money?

What are we being sold? A chimera. . . or something real and valuable.

And most of all - how are we being sold it? In a way that is intrusive of the sense of how we think things *should* be - or is their unfair pressure being exerted, a pressure that invades our privacy in ways. . .

All is fair in love, war, and business - but the rules will be set by those who speak.

The dollar does not merely speak. It swears.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

If the advertising was aimed at me, wouldn't it be on the shows that I watch, not the shows aimed at 7-year-olds?

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Yeesh. Not even a peep about my "hooker" comment.

Hey -- my point was this: Until a certain age, the parents and the kids are one unit. No 7 year old can do much of anything without the parents' support or lack of interest. How can such a young child fulfill desires instilled by marketing and advertising, on her/his very own?

[Busboy]

If the advertising was aimed at me, wouldn't it be on the shows that I watch, not the shows aimed at 7-year-olds?

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Yeesh. Not even a peep about my "hooker" comment.

Hey -- my point was this: Until a certain age, the parents and the kids are one unit. No 7 year old can do much of anything without the parents' support or lack of interest. How can such a young child fulfill desires instilled by marketing and advertising, on her/his very own?

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Got a 17-year-old boy of my own. The hooker line hits a little too close to home. What does he do until 3AM, anyway?

I agree with your point. But, perhaps because of my own poor parenting skills, I also don't believe that parents are able to embody the Platonic Form of the wise, sensible, judicious etc. mother or father for the 24/7/365/18 duration of parenthood. I think that large corporate entities that consciously and effectively exploit my imperfections and my children's immaturity in order to sell things that are bad for them, are bad, and that -- along with parents -- they should be held accountable for their actions, as well. I have a significant philosophical problem with corporate amorality. If it's wrong for a parent to allow something to happen, it is also wrong for a corporation, friend, relative, or whomever to encourage that behavior.

On the larger sense, I'd run through the following checklist:

Does government have a legitimate role in public health issues?

Is obesity a public health issue?

Is childhood obesity a contributing factor to that public health problem?

Is food advertising a significant contributing factor to childhood obesity?

There's a lot of play in some of these questions -- what is "significant?" -- but, if you answer yes to the questions then government has a legitimate role in regulating the advertising. Note that government's role is NOT to make a moral judgment on parenting. Its role is to guard the public health, as it does with food inspection, cigarette and alcohol regulation, food handler regs etc, with whatever tools it has.

We can disagree as to whether kids eating Coco Puffs is a significant problem (or whether government has any legitimate regulatory role, period) But, if it is a problem, and you accept that governments have the right to regulate, it's legitimate to ask the government to ameliorate the problem in the most effective manner -- perhaps by banning advertising aimed at kids.

[kpurvis]

I turned the table on the marketers by using their own commercials to teach my son to spot the fibs in what the commercials claimed. ("See the string? It doesn't really fly. See all the stuff they have to add to make it 'part of a complete' breakfast? If you took the bowl of Cheesy Poofs away, wouldn't it still be a complete breakfast?")

Today at 13, he's a wonderfully skeptical consumer, and he hates McDonald's. (But he definitely wants that hooker.)

[TPO]

Hey -- my point was this: Until a certain age, the parents and the kids are one unit. No 7 year old can do much of anything without the parents' support or lack of interest. How can such a young child fulfill desires instilled by marketing and advertising, on her/his very own?

There is no possible way, as long as the child is never given money for a school lunch, is never given an allowance, and is never allowed to visit friends.

The cigarette comparison is quite obviously strained. So far as we know, there is no way to smoke regularly without impacting your health and increasing your risk of death. Snickers bars, on the other hand, don't kill you if you eat them occasionally, as part of a diet that is reasonable.

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How does an occasional Snickers bar get compared to regular smoking? I think there are people who have occasional cigarettes and live long and productive lives. But that doesn't mean I think cigarette companies should have free reign to market their products to children anyway they see fit.

I would like to see junk food companies and cigarette companies treated similarly. Both know that if their products are consumed at the levels they would like them consumed, ill heath and possibly death can result. Just as cigarette companies must contribute to anti-smoking ads and health expenses, junk food companies could have similar requirements to fulfill.

That way, we are not controlling what they can do but simply requiring them to take responsibility for their actions. After all, if we want "personal responsibility" I think we also should aim for "corporate responsibility."

[Patrick S]

But, perhaps because of my own poor parenting skills, I also don't believe that parents are able to embody the Platonic Form of the wise, sensible, judicious etc. mother or father for the 24/7/365/18 duration of parenthood. 

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But again, you don't need to be the perfect parent 24/7/365/18 to raise kids who arent obese. Obesity doesn't happen to your kids because you cave in on a happy meal every now and then. Kids don't just wake up one morning with a BMI of 40. Obesity happens when you allow your kids' calorie intake to exceed their calorie burning, in a consistent way, over a long period of time. I don't think you need any exceptional skill or wisdom to get your kids to eat reasonably (not perfectly) and exercise reasonably.

I think for many parents of obese children, their problem is not that they happen to fall just a wee bit short of complete perfection, but that they don't take the problem serious at all, and thus put forth little or no effort to modify their kid's behavior. A lot of parents are not caving in occasionally to the happy meal and the Count Chocula, they are feeding their kids a steady diet of this junk, largely for their own convenience, and do not even see a problem with it.

Is food advertising a significant contributing factor to childhood obesity?

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That is the central question, of course. The three other questions you ask have relatively uncontroversial, affirmative answers. Most pepople agree that the gov has some role in public health (e.g. FDA), and that obesity is a public health problem. The role of advertising in that problem is not at all uncontroversial. To again quote the IOM report itself:

". . .current evidence is not sufficient to arrive at any finding about a causal relationship from television advertising to adiposity among children and youth.”

That's not from some industry PR firm, that's what the IOM report itself states. I'm no scientist, but I think that before you ban advertising in an effort to reduce childhood obesity that you should first, you know, actually establish that advertising plays a causal role in childhood obesity. The examples of Sweden and Quebec, which banned food advertising to kids but have obesity rates similar to populations that did not, sure seems to suggest that such a causal role, if it exists at all, is probably quite modest.

[Pontormo]

One of the posts that resonates most with me was written by Mottmott. I am writing in part to draw your attention back to it now that the thread is growing longer.

When Ruth Reichl recently answered questions, she wrote about a son who grew out of a long phase of eating white things simply by becoming familiar with the variety of interesting foods that his parents ate at the same table without being forced to eat a balanced, healthful diet. Alberto Chinali has said something very similar on his own blog regarding the importance of both exposure and lack of dictatorial pressure.

Mottmott pointed out that parents do not always have such concerns and that these concerns are often shared by families with college degrees and high incomes.

Class is not the only factor that we're not taking into account seriously enough when arguing that it is the job of parents to raise their children to be skeptical TV viewers and Eat the Right Thing. Especially while living in St. Louis where I frequented an urban market where produce was cheap, I encountered many lower middle class and lower class shoppers who bought plenty of plums, greens, carrots and cantaloupe before picking up their ribs and sweet potato pie at the shack you pass as you head back to the street.

There are middle-class families with two cars in their own garage headed by parents who do not like to eat vegetables or fresh fruit. They serve plates of packaged sandwich bread along with a big dish of lasagna that one of them has spent hours preparing. There's a bottle of Pepsi on the table while they eat. Sometimes they have salad as duty food.

I have highly educated, successful friends who cook well, travel throughout France and Spain and have sophisticated tastes, but once they became parents, they had to make a concerted effort to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day...to set a better example for the child and to lose weight. Their decision does not seem typical.

MY COMMERCIAL BREAK

I realize that humor is being used to alleviate tension and that we of the radical PC bent sometimes can be incredibly annoying, sorry, but for the parents of teen-age sons who fear their children long for prostitutes, I urge you to drive by a place where these sex workers hang out looking for customers and give them a sense of the desperation that leads them to their line of work. Show them Traffic so they can watch Pretty Woman with a more critical eye since Julia Roberts is to sex work what Alice Waters is to grill staff at McDonald's. [END]

One solution to this mess is public education.

I was in Junior High when they stopped sending all girls to Home Ec and all boys to Shop. I recall that the section devoted to cooking was dismal (hmm...new thread?). There's only so much you can make in a single class period to begin with.

However, in addition to those great Edible Schoolyards in Berkeley and Terrytown, and the Jamie Olivers in the cafeterias of the world, we need public school teachers who have culinary training and a knowledge of nutrition. Science can be taught along with cooking. History and geography and foreign languages should have components devoted to agriculture, cooking and the business and politics of food.

Edited December 9, 2005 by Pontormo (log)

[TPO]

That's not from some industry PR firm, that's what the IOM report itself states. I'm no scientist, but I think that before you ban advertising in an effort to reduce childhood obesity that you should first, you know, actually establish that advertising plays a causal role in childhood obesity.

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Good point, but after reading the entire pagethat quote comes from, I'm not convinced that advertising plays no role, only that television advertising may not be the only explanation for one of the diet-related health outcomes the report covers.

But, like you, I'm no scientist either. Still, I do think the industry could benefit from self-regulation. Otherwise, if they want to advertise freely it should be possible to make them responsible for the consequences of their campaigns.

[Pontormo]

Obesity is an important issue, certainly.

However, it's only the most accessible issue since, as Steven Shaw can tell you, it's currently a national obsession and a popular topic for news programs and articles.

Marketing to children is the ethical dilemma here.

I repeat, I urge you to read Laura Shapiro's Something from the Oven about the ways the food industry pestered the American housewife to change her family's meals.

Now those women are more savvy. So, aha, GO AFTER DA KIDS!!

Edited December 9, 2005 by Pontormo (log)

[Patrick S]

That's not from some industry PR firm, that's what the IOM report itself states. I'm no scientist, but I think that before you ban advertising in an effort to reduce childhood obesity that you should first, you know, actually establish that advertising plays a causal role in childhood obesity.

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Good point, but after reading the entire pagethat quote comes from, I'm not convinced that advertising plays no role, only that television advertising may not be the only explanation for one of the diet-related health outcomes the report covers.

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Well, it should be utterly self-evident to everyone that media advertising "may not be the only explanation" for increasing obesity rates. While we don't have the conclusive evidence, according to the IOM, that advertising exposure plays any causal role in childhood obesity, we do have conclusive evidence with regard to other factors. Specifically, we know that there has been an emormous decrease in physical activity over the past several decades, and that levels of physical activity have a direct, causal relationship with adiposity.

[Pontormo]

And what are companies like Frito-Lay/Pepsi doing?

They're telling people to exercise more!!!

They're sponsoring playground equipment.

Gets them off the hook....right?

Those campaigns are not as transparent as the ads that Phillip Morris is forced (? I forget) to run about the dangers of smoking.

And we all know how carefully smokers attend to the cautionary note about possible dangers to their health when they buy cigarettes...

[MarketStEl]

One solution to this mess is public education. 

I was in Junior High when they stopped sending all girls to Home Ec and all boys to Shop.  I recall that the section devoted to cooking was dismal (hmm...new thread?).  There's only so much you can make in a single class period to begin with. 

However, in addition to those great Edible Schoolyards in Berkeley and Terrytown, and the Jamie Olivers in the cafeterias of the world, we need public school teachers who have culinary training and a knowledge of nutrition.  Science can be taught along with cooking.  History and geography and foreign languages should have components devoted to agriculture, cooking and the business and politics of food.

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We ask the schools to do so much that we once expected the parents to do, it's a wonder the kids can learn anything at all.

However, since kids spend so much of their formative years in that environment, we probably have few alternatives.

A bunch of people at Penn are addressing this issue in a hands-on fashion:

Urban Nutrition Initiative

They've done some pretty impressive stuff in the West Philadelphia public schools. (A recent Newsweek article mentioned the program approvingly in the context of restoring a healthy balance to overstressed lives. I wrote several articles about UNI projects for the Penn Current and know the program's director.)

One of the things the students who started UNI found was that neighborhood stores in poorer communities--where supermarkets are often scarce--offer fewer healthy foods than those in more affluent communities. One of the responses they came up with was an afternoon produce stand in a middle school in the Angora section of the city. The stand both exposes students at the school--and by extension, their families--to a wider selection of fresh produce and teaches them valuable business skills.

Other UNI programs sponsor community fitness evenings, neighborhood farmers' markets, school gardens and even an herb garden that sells its produce to area restaurants.

[Pontormo]

FYI: Related threads to consider in this forum include one initiated by Gifted Gourmet on McDonald's and its campaign to appear more healthful.

Then, of course, see General Food Topics for discussion of children and obesity where I included a link to an article in The Washington Post about junk food companies and their PR campaigns to appeal to the concerns of parents.

Link to the Frito-Lay campaign mentioned directly above as well as in Melissa Shaw's thread:

Just for the Fun of It.

Also see

Born to Buy.

[Carrot Top]

Link to the Frito-Lay campaign mentioned directly above as well as in Melissa Shaw's thread:

Just for the Fun of It.

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A useful tool to have handy when reading information provided "for our use and benefit" by corporations whose mission is to answering to their shareholder's demands is the following book:

On Bullshit