Part 2: Food Ads and Kids

  • Researchers say food advertisers convince kids they need different food than adults. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Lots of people are concerned
that American children are
getting fat. More than one-
third are considered overweight
or obese. And some are pointing
the finger at those who manufacture
and advertise food for kids. In
the second part of our two-part
series on food and health, Julie
Grant reports on efforts to crack
down on food marketing targeted
at children:

Transcript

Lots of people are concerned
that American children are
getting fat. More than one-
third are considered overweight
or obese. And some are pointing
the finger at those who manufacture
and advertise food for kids. In
the second part of our two-part
series on food and health, Julie
Grant reports on efforts to crack
down on food marketing targeted
at children:

Have you ever tried going to the supermarket with a five year old? They’re cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and everything else on the shelves that’s colorful with big cartoon characters – strategically placed right at kids-eye level. So, They beg. They plead. Some even just grab what they want.

It’s called parent pestering.

Marion Nestle is Professor of Public Health Nutrition at New York University and author of several books on food politics. She says food advertisers convince kids they need different food than adults. And they want kids to pester their parents.

“I hear parents tell me all the time that the kids won’t even taste things because they say they’re not supposed to be eating that. They’re supposed to be eating chicken fingers, or things that come in packages with cartoons on them.”


Nestle says marketers are just trying to sell products – they’re not worried about obesity and other health problems caused by the processed food targeted to children. She’d like to see some big changes.

“If I were food czar, I would just say, ‘you can’t advertise to children, period.’ They’re not capable of making intelligent, adult decisions about what they’re eating.”

The Federal Trade Commission agrees the ads are a contributing factor to growing problem of childhood obesity. The FTC, the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies will recommend changes to food marketing rules to Congress later this year.


Most people in the food and advertising industries say cutting off all marketing to kids would go way too far.

Elaine Kolish is Director of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. It’s part of the Better Business Bureau. She’s been working with 16 of the major U.S. food manufacturers to change what is advertised to children.

Over the past few years, she says food manufacturers have spent millions of dollars to reformulate kids products – like cereals – to make them healthier.

“Before the initiative, cereals that were advertised to children might have had as much as 16 grams of sugar per serving. Now the maximum that anyone could have is 12 grams of sugar per serving. In fact, more of the cereals have less. So that’s a big improvement right there.”

And Kolish says advertising can actually help to get kids to eat healthier. For example, the McDonalds happy meal. Instead of offering kids French fries and a soft drink, the default happy meal now includes skim milk and apples – although it includes a side of caramel dipping sauce.

“I think now because of Burger King and McDonalds, alone, there’s probably more fruit advertising than ever before…and the sales and the trend data is really good. McDonalds has sold over 100-million orders of apple dippers in the last two years. That’s a lot of apples.”

But recent surveys at the University of Arizona and at Yale show that TV and online marketing toward children is still for foods that are not healthy for children. It’s mostly for things that are high in sugar, fat and salt.

Mary Engle is Associate Director for Advertising at the FTC. She says, for the most part, food companies have been taking foods that are bad for kids and only managing to make them less unhealthy.

“Whereas the proposal that the government group came up with is to only allow the marketing of truly healthful foods to children – foods that actually make a positive contribution to a healthy diet. So it’s much more limited which kinds of foods could be marketed to kids.”

Some food makers call the government proposal extreme. But government officials say they wouldn’t ban all ads – just those that encourage kids to eat bad food.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Going Renewable Voluntarily

  • Researchers say some companies bought renewable power because customers pushed them to. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The market for renewable solar
and wind power is growing quickly.
Most people assume that growth
has been mandated by government.
But Shawn Allee found
a report that challenges that:

Transcript

The market for renewable solar
and wind power is growing quickly.
Most people assume that growth
has been mandated by government.
But Shawn Allee found
a report that challenges that:

The report’s from the Center for Resource Solutions, an advocacy group.

Orrin Cook was a co-author. He totaled up growth in sales of wind, solar and other renewable energy between 2003 and 2008. He compared how much growth came from government mandates and how much was bought voluntarily. Cook says the voluntary market grew a tad faster.

“States requiring renewable energy and federal government requiring renewable energy is really just part of that equation. Another part is businesses and individuals buying renewable energy when they don’t have to.”

Cook says this voluntary renewable energy market grew because some companies have eco-minded managers. But he says companies also bought renewable power because customers pushed them to.

Cook looked at federal figures that came out before the financial crisis.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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The Price of Recyclables

  • Mark Murray, with the nonprofit Californians Against Waste, says that in the space of one month, October 2008, the price for mixed paper on the global market plunged from $100 a ton to less than $30. (Photo by Erin Kelly)

If you want to get a sense of how the overall economy is doing, look outside your window the night before garbage and recycling day. Last fall, you’d have seen trucks full of cardboard circling the neighborhood. By winter, the cardboard poachers had disappeared. That’s because wastepaper – like other recyclables – feeds into a multi-billion dollar global commodities market that rises and falls just like housing prices and stocks. Amy Standen has more:

Transcript

If you want to get a sense of how the overall economy is doing, look outside your window the night before garbage and recycling day. Last fall, you’d have seen trucks full of cardboard circling the neighborhood. By winter, the cardboard poachers had disappeared. That’s because wastepaper – like other recyclables – feeds into a multi-billion dollar global commodities market that rises and falls just like housing prices and stocks. Amy Standen has more:

Last winter, Carolyn Almquist had a problem. Carolyn’s in charge of exports for APL transportation in Oakland, California. It’s her job to move shipping containers full of American exports, like wastepaper, to factories over in Asia. The problem was, the factories in Asia didn’t want them.

“There was no buyer. It would arrive at our terminal, say, in Jakarta, and no one would pick it up.”

Asian paper mills were canceling deals with the ships halfway across the Pacific. And Carolyn – who’s in charge of APL’s exports – was the first to hear about it.

“I’m getting an email saying, ‘what are you people doing? Don’t send stuff without a buyer.’”

Waste paper is the country’s number one export, by volume, so when prices fall, it’s not just Carolyn who’s in trouble.

“Hey, Alex, good morning! Steve Moore calling.”

Steve runs a company called Pacific Rim Recycling, 40 miles north of San Francisco.

“Got any updates for me on the marketplace?”

Every day, he calls around to see how much people are paying for things like newspaper, water bottles, old envelopes.

“What about corrugated?”

Most of our recycled cardboard, and a lot of our plastic ends up at Asian factories where it’s turned into iPhone boxes, polyester shirts, that are then shipped right back to the US market.

Until, that is, we stop shopping.

“When people stop buying those goods and products – the VCRS and the TVs from China – there’s no need for the boxes to go around them.”

That’s Mark Murray, with the nonprofit Californians Against Waste. He says that in the space of one month, October 2008, the price for mixed paper on the global market plunged from $100 a ton to less than $30. In two months, plastic water bottles dropped from $500 a ton, to less than $100.

“What recycling experienced in the last six months is really the same thing the entire global economy has been experiencing.”

So, when the economy falters, recyclers suffer. Some shut down entirely. Others were forced to simply dump unsellable paper into local landfills.

Steve Moore hunkered down to wait it out.

“We couldn’t sell anything for six weeks. All this material was backing up, I had to rent space next door. I had to sell it at $10 a ton, just to get rid of it.”

By February, prices had started to recover, as demand for consumer goods began picking up a bit – but they’re no where near the highs of a year ago.

“And a ton of paper today is worth $100 a ton. Last year, it was worth $200 a ton. It’s a very volatile market, so the economics of that are pretty severe.”

One reason the market’s so volatile is that with recyclables, the supply never stops. No matter how much or how little those Asian factories want our cardboard and our plastic water bottles, we are going to keep putting them out on the sidewalk.

Oil manufacturers can turn down the spigot when demand drops, to control supply so it keeps pace with demand. But bales of paper and plastic just take up too much space. And here at Pacific Rim recycling, the trucks keep rolling in.

(sound of bottles and cans at Pacific Rim)

“The volume of this material is huge!”

But at least it’s moving. Prices for our recyclables might be lower than their peak a year ago, but Steve Moore can relax again.

And, over at the Port of Oakland, Carolyn’s no longer getting angry emails.

“Things are picking up again. Financing has freed up. The banks are a little less nervous, If we had a ship here today, she’s be sailing Oakland full. Life is a little bit easier.”

And Carolyn Almquist knows as well as anyone in this industry to enjoy it while it lasts.

For The Environment Report, I’m Amy Standen.

Related Links

DC Gets Tough on Disposable Bags

  • The Anacostia River in Washington DC is ridden with garbage, and plastic bags make up 20% of the trash tossed in (Photo by Kavitha Cardoza)

For years, the Anacostia River that flows through

Washington DC was widely known as the forgotten

river, lost in the shadow of the better known

Potomac. At one point, some say the trash in the

river was so thick you could walk from one side to

the other without getting wet. Today things are

better. But, most people say not enough has been

done. DC’s city council is considering a five cent

tax on every disposable plastic and paper bag with

most of the money going to cleanup efforts. As Kavitha

Cardoza reports if it passes,

the fee would be the toughest law on plastic and paper

bags in the country:

Transcript

For years, the Anacostia River that flows through

Washington DC was widely known as the forgotten

river, lost in the shadow of the better known

Potomac. At one point, some say the trash in the

river was so thick you could walk from one side to

the other without getting wet. Today things are

better. But, most people say not enough has been

done. DC’s city council is considering a five cent

tax on every disposable plastic and paper bag with

most of the money going to cleanup efforts. As Kavitha

Cardoza reports if it passes,

the fee would be the toughest law on plastic and paper

bags in the country:

Kindergartners from the Evergreen School in Wheaton, Maryland are leaning over a rail and looking at bags, cups, wrappers and other trash floating in the Anacostia River.

They’ve travelled to D.C. to learn more about, as they put it, “what kills fish.”

The five-year-olds are NOT impressed with what they see.

“Bottles, balls, yucky. It’s really, really disgusting garbage!”

The children roll up their sleeves and start pulling trash from the bank. But, it’s going to take a lot more than their small hands to clean up the mess.

Jim Connerly is with the Anacostia Watershed Society. He says Washington D.C.’s own environmental studies estimate each year 20,000 tons of trash is thrown into the Anacostia.

“It’s like a landfill on a conveyor belt.”

Studies also show plastic bags make up about 20% of the trash in the Anacostia.

When grocery bags are thrown away, many of them are swept up by rain water and carried into storm drains that flow into streams. They end up in the Anacostia.

The bags often ensnare birds and turtles. Fish eat the small torn pieces. That results in toxins making their way into the food chain.

Tommy Wells is the D.C. council member who came up with the idea of charging a nickel for plastic and paper bags.

“By charging a nickel, it really gets more into your head than your pocket. Also, it reminds you maybe I should have bought a reusable bag.”

And part of the money raised will help low-income residents buy reusable bags.

But Laurie Walker hasn’t heard about that proposal. She says, as a senior citizen on a fixed income, those nickels can add up quickly.

“Five cents is a whole lot of money, if I put it in a jar, every month when I get paid. I can buy a chicken, hot dogs, eggs for my grandchildren or for myself. I can buy a whole lot with that.”

The fee would raise nearly 2.5 million dollars a year. Besides the reusable bags, the money will fund educational efforts and return a portion to local businesses as an incentive.

The chemical industry which makes the plastic bags hopes anybody opposed to these kinds of fees or taxes will come out against this proposal. But environmentalists like the idea.

(sound of a beaver)

Back at the Anacostia River system, Jim Connerly says, with a little effort, the Anacostia could be trash-free in just a few years.


“In a perfect world, the water quality would be addressed. The thing that’s encouraging to me is that nature is always trying to seek balance. If we let the river alone, if we stop the input of pollutants, it would clean itself. It’s just that we’re not allowing the river to do that.”

Connerly and many others are hoping the Washington DC bag fee helps make that happen.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kavitha Cardoza.

Related Links

Interview: Carbon Cap and Trade

  • If proposed energy legislation passes in Congress, renewable energy sources like wind an solar will become more competitive with fossil fuels. (Photo by Erin Toner)

Congress is considering a carbon cap-and-trade program that would make fossil fuels more expensive and give renewable energy an advantage. The U.S. is in the middle of a huge transition in where we get energy and how we use it. Some businesses leaders predict these changes will be disastrous for the economy killing jobs and making energy expensive. Lester Graham discussed some of those concerns with Tom Lyon, the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.

Transcript

Congress is considering a carbon cap-and-trade program that would make fossil fuels more expensive and give renewable energy an advantage. The U.S. is in the middle of a huge transition in where we get energy and how we use it. Some businesses leaders predict these changes will be disastrous for the economy killing jobs and making energy expensive. Lester Graham discussed some of those concerns with Tom Lyon, the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise:

“I think it’s important to think about who you’re hearing these things from. Because there are certain industries who are really opposed and scared and they’re making a lot of noise. And it’s essentially the fossil fuel people; it’s the coal industry and then after that, the oil industry. And they have a very special-interest stake in this. So you gotta take what they say with a big grain of salt. Probably electricity prices will increase: not by a lot, not by fifty percent. They’ll go up slightly—depends what kind of region of the country you are in. If you’re in an area dominated by coal-fired power, your costs will go up some because coal is dirty, coal’s been getting a free ride for a long time. The price of coal should go up. If you’re in an area that’s already shifted towards renewables, you’re costs won’t go up much.”

And you mean wind turbines and…

“Wind turbines, hydroelectric power, biomass, solar.”

And what about jobs? Are we going to see this being a job killer?

“It’s going to be a transition device; it’s going to allow us to move towards a 21st century economy. So it’s going to allow us to put people on the ground building wind turbines, installing and maintaining wind turbines, putting in solar cells, and I think there are going to be a lot of jobs in the energy efficiency sector. It’s going to transition our automobile sector towards plug-in electric vehicles and things that might sell in a future economy that’s going to be climate constrained and that’s going to face higher energy prices.”

So it sounds like coal miners should be thinking about job training or retraining.

“Coal miners should definitely be thinking about retraining! You know, that’s just, it’s just an inevitable thing—where the economy is going, retraining is an important thing but this puts us on the right path toward the future.”

Now the President, and some environmentalists, and some leading businesses say, “We’ll be more energy independent, we’ll have clean wind and solar power, we’ll be much more energy efficient because of retrofitting these buildings, we’ll lead the world in renewable, clean energy. How’s that benefit me, at home?

“I think the first thing is, it benefits you because you’re helping to move the planet in the right direction. You’re making the planet a better place for your kids, for your grandkids, and you’re averting the risk that we go over the climate cliff. Because that’s very much a real risk.”

So global warming really is going to be as disastrous as we hear some of the alarmists say.

“It could be. We don’t know for certain. There’s a whole lot of uncertainty around this. However, I think most people who’ve thought about this agree we need to move in the direction of solving the climate problem because the news is always bad. Every new report that comes out of modern science shows the planet’s warming faster than we thought, sea level is rising faster than we thought; the whole thing is moving much more quickly than people thought even five years ago. So there’s no news that’s pointing in the other direction. The urgency just keeps increasing.”

There’s likely to be a huge fight in Washington and Congress is going to be terribly divided on carbon cap-and-trade: what do you think the likely outcome is?

“I think we’re gonna pass something. The Obama folks are very committed; they’ve staffed up with very smart people who understand the issue, who’ve been working on it for years. There’s a lot of political commitment within the congress already and Obama has taken this on as a signature issue.”

Tom Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute of Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. He spoke with The Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

Related Links

Stores Required to Label Some Foods

  • This rule requires stores to tell you what country some of your food comes from Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Starting this week, supermarkets are officially required to tell you where some of your meat and produce comes from. But as Rebecca Williams reports it can get confusing at the store:

Transcript

Starting this week, supermarkets are officially required to tell you where some of your meat and produce comes from. But as Rebecca Williams reports it can get confusing at the store:

This rule requires stores to tell you what country some of your food comes from.

The rule covers things like beef and pork, chicken, and vegetables.

Supermarkets have already been adding these labels over the past few months.

Deborah White is with the Food Marketing Institute. The group represents supermarkets. She says they don’t like being forced to label specific products – and the law is quirky.

“The law applies, for example, to chicken but not turkey. It applies to peanuts and pecans but not almonds and walnuts and those were decisions that Congress made.”

And there are other quirks. Frozen peas have to be labeled and so do frozen carrots. But a bag of peas and carrots mixed together doesn’t have to be labeled.

The new agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, says he wants to fix these quirks. He’s asking the food industry to voluntarily add more information to labels than the rule now requires.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Organics Rotting in Bad Economy

  • Shopping at organic foods stores is one thing consumers are cutting back on (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Watching paychecks shrink and
retirement funds dissolve is making people
change their buying habits. Many are
skipping things like natural foods because
they’re seen as luxuries. But Julie Grant
reports some analysts say this is just a
short term trend:

Transcript

Watching paychecks shrink and
retirement funds dissolve is making people
change their buying habits. Many are
skipping things like natural foods because
they’re seen as luxuries. But Julie Grant
reports some analysts say this is just a
short term trend:

Michelle DeSalvo’s daughter plans to go to college next
year. But her husband might need to take a pay cut just to
keep his job. So they’re trying to save money wherever
possible. That means no more shopping at the natural foods
store.

Michelle DeSalvo: “It’s definitely more expensive. You have
to go to things that are less expensive and natural is
definitely not that.”

Julie Grant: “So what has changed in your shopping habits?”

Michelle DeSalco: “I go to Wal-Mart. (laughs) Yeah, for
food. It’s cheaper.”

Not everyone is rushing to Wal-Mart.

Brenda Fisher says her family is struggling to pay for two
kids in college, and they’re looking for different ways to buy
food. She used to stop at the butcher shop at Whole Foods
– the national, natural foods supermarket. But not anymore.

“So I would buy their meats because their meats are
incredible. So um, I just can’t afford it. I would actually like
to buy a whole cow from a farmer, because they’re cheaper.
And I just have to get the money together.”

Okay, so not everyone wants to buy a cow. But a lot of
people are moving away from things that seem more
expensive – like natural and organic products.

In recent years, those foods have seen huge sales growth.
But as the economy has turned sour, so have their sales.
Whole Foods Store has seen a considerable sales drop at its
stores. And the company’s stock prices plunged more than
70% this year.

Nancy Koehn is professor of the history of retailing and
consumer behavior at the Harvard business school.
She says some people see upscale stores such as Whole
Foods as an indulgence – and that’s not what they’re
wanting.

“I think we will see, we are seeing, a rush away from a lot of
luxury right now.”

Koehn says that’s short term. She says consumers have
been floored by the tanking of the stock market and the
vulnerability of the financial systems. And they’ve done
something we haven’t seen in 25 years: they’ve stopped
buying.

But Koehn says this is just one moment. She says people
will walk back into stores. But they will have revised
priorities for their homes and families.

“There’s no way anyone’s coming out of this moment without
being effected by it. It’s a much more complicated story than
the rush to Wal-Mart.”

Koehn says natural foods stores, like Whole Foods, and
other environmentally-centered companies, are actually in
just the right place for the long term economic trend. When
consumers start buying again, she thinks, many will spend
money in places that are taking care of workers, animals,
and the environment.

“And I think we’re going to see that the same things that built
Whole Foods, that have made the environment and our
interconnectedness so important to people, and moved that
from item number 10 or 20 on people’s lists of important
issues up to the top 2 to 4. Those aren’t going away because
we’re in the trough of a business cycle.”

Koehn expects that many people will spend their holiday
money at big box discount stores. But she says many who
feel they’ve been treated badly in the economic downturn will
go back to the companies they think treat people and the
environment better.

Koehn expects that by early next year, companies that get
behind sustainable products will wind up being the economic
winners.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Cranberries Burst Into New Markets

  • Cranberry harvest in New Jersey (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)

One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:


In the late 1990s, the market for cranberries started drying up. Americans didn’t
seem to crave the pucker of our native berry. Some years growers were getting as
little as 8 dollars a barrel and they didn’t know if they could stay in business much
longer.

Today, they’re getting as much as 150 dollars per barrel.

Dawn Gates-Allen is fourth generation cranberry grower on Cape Cod.

“It’s been ten years of suppressed grower return for the price per barrel.”

Prices are rebounding because cranberries have gained popularity as a healthful
fruit overseas. Europe and Japan have started importing a third of America’s
cranberry crop.

But even with that new demand, you shouldn’t see a big jump in prices at the
supermarket this year: the weather has been great for cranberries and there’s a
bumper crop.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Recycling Prices Down in the Dumps

  • (Photo by Julie Grant)

The recycling industry is the
latest to take a hit from the world’s
economic problems. Rebecca Williams
has more:

Transcript

The recycling industry is the
latest to take a hit from the world’s
economic problems. Rebecca Williams
has more:

The bottom has dropped out of most commodity markets: recycled paper,
metals, everything. It’s tied to the collapse of economies worldwide.

Tom Watson is with the National Waste Prevention Coalition. He says
recycling companies’ profits are way down.

“A lot of it is connected with China – and the demand for fewer products
there so they need less of the recycled materials for the packaging.”

Watson says China is buying a lot less of our recycled paper and cardboard
to make packaging, because we’re all buying a lot fewer products from
China.

That means recyclables are stacking up in a lot of places. Recyclers are
starting to talk about charging garbage companies to drop stuff off. And that
might mean we’ll be paying higher trash bills.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

How Much Help From Offshore Drilling?

  • Oil is a global commodity, so oil drilled in the US would not have to stay here (Photo courtesy of the Minerals Management Service)

There’s been a lot of talk lately
about drilling for more oil off the American
coasts. Rebecca Williams reports that oil
is not required to go to the US markets:

Transcript

There’s been a lot of talk lately
about drilling for more oil off the American
coasts. Rebecca Williams reports that oil
is not required to go to the US markets:

Oil is a global commodity. Oil drilled in the US would not have to stay
here.

But most of it probably would.

Alan Good is with Morningstar. He analyzes the oil and gas industries.

“It would generally go straight to America because it would incur the lowest
transportation costs to get to the United States refineries.”

But Good says it would be at least a decade before that oil would come
online. And even then it’s not clear how much offshore drilling here would
reduce imports from the Middle East.

“It will help somewhat with imports but it’s not likely to make a huge dent.”

And he says it’ll probably have little effect on the price you pay at the pump
because world demand drives oil prices.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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