It's Time to Stop Hawking Junk Food to Kids

Say goodbye to Kool Aid ads with jovial juice mascots and sugary cereals hawked by SpongeBob Squarepants. Well, maybe. Possibly. If the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can get its act together.

A recent news report revealed that the USDA, along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), may start limiting how the food industry markets junk food to kids. As The Huffington Post reports, an interagency document reveals a plan that would seriously restrict how food can be marketed to children between the ages of two and 17. According to BNET, the FTC and FDA have already signed onto the proposal, but the USDA hasn't endorsed the plan yet. The proposal was originally presented at a meeting in December of 2009.

If the USDA does decide to get on board, the proposal could revolutionize food advertising and how it impacts children. One especially promising nugget from the plan says that "Foods marketed to children must provide a meaningful contribution to a healthful diet. Food must contain at least 50% by weight of one or more of the following: fruit; vegetable; whole grain; fat-free or low-fat milk or yogurt; fish; extra lean meat or poultry; eggs; nuts and seeds; or beans." The plan would, in essence, prohibit fun cartoon characters from pimping out products loaded with fats, sugars, and sodium.

I can hear those food industry execs groaning now. Marketing junk food to children is a multi-billion-dollar industry. As Change.org blogger David Orr reported, a recent Yale study found that an overwhelming majority of children will select food items featuring cartoon characters over identical snacks with unadorned packaging. Most kids will even say that the cartooned goods taste better. Another study found that junk food advertising could contribute to as much as 40 percent of childhood obesity cases in the U.S. That's a lot of people considering that as many as one-third of American kids and teens are obese.

It's going to take a partnership to really make a dent in the childhood obesity epidemic, and we'll need school systems, the federal government, the food industry, and parents to all get on board. But it's time that federal agencies stop pandering to food industry lobbyists. Sign our petition telling the USDA to sign onto the proposal that would restrict how the food industry markets junk food to children.

Photo credit: Kevin Krejci via Flickr