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HOW FOOD MARKETERS ENDANGER THE HEALTH OF SCHOOL
CHILDREN Presented
at Commercialization of Childhood: How Marketing Harms Children
Summit, September 10, 2001 Our
children’s health is being compromised by food industry marketers in
elementary schools, who want children to spend their allowances on their
brands, nag their parents to buy their brands, and, ultimately, develop
loyalty to their brands.
Consider
this. A huge chart posted in
a school cafeteria displays McDonald’s golden arches and urges students
to Pig Out On Books. Each
student is represented by a knife, fork, or spoon that progresses along
the chart from left to right as he or she reads more books.
A sixth grader explains that students receive free burgers and
other items, depending on the number of books read.
Using the school’s public address system, the principal exhorts
students to hand in their reading lists in time to be eligible for the
awards. McDonald’s
is not alone. Marketers of
all sorts of foods high in fat, sodium, and added sugars are targeting
elementary school children using all sorts of marketing techniques. Brand-name foods are served, advertised and promoted in
school cafeterias. Products
and coupons redeemable for products are distributed in classrooms on
holidays and as rewards for achievement, in vending machines, and on trips
to fast food outlets. Children
and their parents sell food products (mostly candy) to raise funds for
their schools and collect food product labels and register receipts
redeemable for school equipment. Food
advertising reaches students on book covers, educational posters, and
school buses; in children’s magazines and newspapers; via radio, videos,
the Internet; and in the form of teaching materials.
The food industry sponsors teaching materials and contests that
cover a range of subject areas and incorporate the sponsor’s products or
promote the sponsor’s brand. These
marketing practices run the gamut from obvious propaganda, such as
distributing products directly to students or advertising on book covers,
to projects with an apparent public service motive, such as providing
school equipment in return for product labels or partnering with nutrition
professionals to develop educational materials for use in classrooms
Food
companies often contract with marketing companies and advertising agencies
to conduct focus groups with students during the school day, or for help
with development or distribution of their materials. Some teaching materials include student surveys, which
provide marketers with student demographics and data on their eating
habits; many also include coupons redeemable for the sponsor’s products.
Meanwhile,
elementary school age children spend more than $2 billion a year on snacks
and beverages and consume over 25% of their vegetables in the form of
potato chips and french fries. And
childhood obesity has become epidemic.
About 25% of children in the United States are overweight or at
risk for overweight. No one knows for certain what is causing this epidemic.
But it is known that school-aged children consume diets that can
lead to chronic disease, that children spend more time in school than at
any other activity (including watching television), that most children get
information about food and nutrition from schools and teachers, and that
the school environment influences eating behavior.
Ninety percent of the children surveyed in a recent Gallup poll
reported getting their information about food and nutrition from schools
and teachers. As
a nutrition educator, I’m concerned about
the food industry’s marketing practices in schools, and about my profession’s apparent indifference to
the phenomenon. In reality,
nutrition associations have aided the food industry’s school-based
marketing efforts through partnerships with and funding from industry, and
by promoting industry programs at conferences and in journals.
Why? Because many
nutritionists work for the food industry, or their research is funded by
the food industry, and nutrition organizations depend on industry funding.
Nutrition educators need to stop rationalizing their financial
relationships with the food industry.
When we accept industry funds, inevitably our objectivity is
compromised. Children’s health is not an acceptable trade-off for needed
funds and educational materials – no matter how severe the budgetary
constraints. “Lack of funds
and materials” is simply a
self-serving rationale for participating in the use of school children to
serve the business interests of members of the food industry.
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