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

Part 1: Regulating Sweet Foods

  • Researchers say science is starting to show that people can become addicted to sugar, fat and salt. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

More people are becoming concerned
about the growing problems of obesity
and diabetes. Some even compare
foods that contribute to these health
problems to nicotine and tobacco. In
the first part of our series on food and
health, Julie Grant reports on efforts
to regulate foods that are bad for you
in the same way as cigarettes:

Transcript

More people are becoming concerned
about the growing problems of obesity
and diabetes. Some even compare
foods that contribute to these health
problems to nicotine and tobacco. In
the first part of our series on food and
health, Julie Grant reports on efforts
to regulate foods that are bad for you
in the same way as cigarettes:

Yale University professor Kelly Brownell has been watching for a long time as Americans gain weight. He says obesity and diabetes are creating debilitating health problems. And the food industry is largely to blame.

Brownell says science is starting to show that people can become addicted to sugar, fat and salt: the same stuff that’s in most processed foods.

“Certain parts of the brain get activated by food constituents, particularly sugar, that look like the same activation that occurs with heavily addictive substances like nicotine, alcohol or morphine.”


Brownell says the science is not definitive at this point. And he doesn’t expect it will ever show that donuts are as addictive as cigarettes. But he expects something similar. And so, he’s advocating that society treat these treats the same way as cigarettes: tax them. And put the money toward prevention programs.

Brownell is specifically pushing for a tax on sugary drinks. He says this approach worked for smokes, so why not soda pop.

“Oh, there’s no question about it. The rate of people smoking in the United States is about half of what it was in the 1950s and 60s. And that’s attributable to a number of things. But economists have figured that the taxes were the single most effective contributor to that.”

Brownell says California has held hearings on the idea, the New York state legislature is considering a tax on sugary drinks, and New Hampshire has just introduced legislation. And he says that’s just the tip of the iceberg. More sugar taxes are on the way.

We tried to reach the food industry’s major trade group: the grocery manufacturers association to comment for this story – but they didn’t respond. We also didn’t hear back from General Mills – a company that recently announced plans to lower the sugar content in its cereals.

We did speak with John Feldman. He’s an attorney who represents some of the major food manufacturers. He says they make foods that have salt, fat and sugar because people like them.

“There are products that people want to buy because they taste good or they are fun or they are attractive, of course. If they didn’t sell, people wouldn’t make ‘em.”

Feldman says any laws limiting or taxing certain foods must be based on scientific evidence: facts that show the foods are causing health problems. He says science hasn’t proven that with sugar, salt and fat.

Consumers at one Ohio supermarket also want sugary drink tax idea to fizzle out. College student Alicia Cobb is looking at the sweetened teas. She says beverages are only one of the reasons Americans are overweight.

“Well, so is McDonalds and Burger King and not working out and being a lazy bum.”

“How they think people supposed to live, taxing everything?”

Marie Holloway has a 12-pack of ginger ale in her cart. She says she’s not supposed to have sugar – because her doctor is concerned she’s developing diabetes.

“I only get a small income. By the time my doctor takes all of my money for copayments and doctor bills and stuff then I don’t have anything left because they’ve taxed everything so high. I think it’s terrible.”

Some TV pundits call the soda tax part of the Obama nanny state – telling people what’s good for them and limiting their choices. But those who support the sugar beverage tax say it doesn’t take away choice: it just helps people break what might be an addictive habit. One that’s costing everyone lots of money in health care costs.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

How Many Calories Is That?

  • The study showed that in some cases, dishes had twice as many calories as they were supposed to. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Counting calories is easier
to do now that more restaurants
are publicly posting calorie
information about their food.
But Samara Freemark
tells us why those numbers might
be misleading:

Transcript

Counting calories is easier
to do now that more restaurants
are publicly posting calorie
information about their food.
But Samara Freemark
tells us why those numbers might
be misleading:

18% – a new study says that’s the average amount that restaurants underreport the calories in their dishes.

Researchers at Tufts University analyzed the calorie content of meals from chain restaurants. Then they compared those numbers to the calorie counts posted publicly by restaurants on websites and menus.

Susan Roberts is the senior author of the study. She says in some cases, dishes had twice as many calories as they were supposed to.

“You just assume that the numbers are right, you don’t really think about, well, is this number only half what it really is? To have the calories on the web or in the restaurant, that would be a great thing. But they do have to be accurate.”

Roberts says the biggest culprit is portion size – restaurants serve larger amounts of food than advertised. She says the researchers also found that many restaurants served extra side dishes that weren’t included in posted calorie counts.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Interview: The End of Overeating

  • Dr. Kessler's new book describes the three components in food that keep us addicted: sugar, salt, and fat. (Photo courtesy of the National Canter Institute)

On average, people in the US
are much fatter than just 30
years ago. Obesity is an epidemic.
The Environment Report’s Lester
Graham talked with the author
of the book ‘The End of Overeating,’
which argues the American diet
is to blame:

Transcript

On average, people in the US
are much fatter than just 30
years ago. Obesity is an epidemic.
The Environment Report’s Lester
Graham talked with the author
of the book ‘The End of Overeating,’
which argues the American diet
is to blame:

Lester Graham: This is The Environment Report. People in the US are much fatter than just 30 years ago. Obesity has become an epidemic. The author of the book, “The End of Overeating” argues, “It’s the American diet.” David Kessler is a pediatrician and served as commissioner of the US Food and Drug administration under George Bush I and Bill Clinton. Dr. Kessler, give me the short answer, why has obesity become so rampant in the US?

David Kessler: We’ve taken fat, sugar, and salt, put it on every corner in America, made it available 24/7, made it socially acceptable to eat any time. We’ve added the emotional gloss of advertising—you’ll love it, you’ll want it. We’ve made food into entertainment. In fact, we’re living in a food carnival.

LG: I’ve been watching restaurant commercials, especially since reading your book, and I see a lot of, “It’s a fun time, it’s a good time, bring your friends, it’s a family gathering.” There is a lot of that emotional appeal, but it doesn’t talk about nutrition.

DK: Exactly. Sometimes about the economic value of food, but always it’s the emotional gloss that’s added. And food’s very reinforcing. Fat, sugar, and salt stimulate us, we come back more. But when you add that emotional gloss: “You’ll want it, you need it, you’ll have a good time.” That amplifies the reward value of food.

LG: Now your book spends a lot of time looking at the science of why we respond to sugar, salt, and fat and how the food industry has taken advantage of our response to sugar, salt, and fat. Why do we like those things in our food, why do we always crave more?

DK: That was the question that got me started 7 years ago. I wanted to understand why it was so hard for me to resist my favorite foods. I was watching Oprah one night, there was a woman on the show who said, “I eat when my husband leaves for work in the morning, I eat before he comes home at night, I eat when I’m happy, I eat when I’m sad, I eat when I’m hungry, I eat when I’m not hungry.” And then she said, “I don’t like myself.” And it was that behavior, I could relate to that. I have suits in every size. That’s what I wanted to understand, I wanted to understand the science and we finally do have the science to explain to that woman that it’s not her fault. In fact, her brain is becoming excessively activated by all the food cues in our environment—she’s being bombarded, she’s being constantly stimulated.

LG: You infer the food processors and the chain restaurants, are using some of the same techniques the tobacco companies used to get people hooked on cigarettes. In what ways?

DK: They certainly understand the inputs. They understand that sugar, fat and salt stimulate. They understand the outputs, that you come back for more. Have they understand the neuroscience? I doubt it. But they learned experientially what works, and they optimized food, they constructed food to stimulate us to come back for more. Let me explain how it works, let me give you analogy with tobacco. We have to be careful, there are similarities but there are also differences. Nicotine: nicotine is a moderately reinforcing chemical. But add to that the smoke, the throat scratch, the cellophane crinkling of the pack, the color of the pack, the image of the cowboy, the glamour, the sexiness, the sense that it was cool, the imagery from 20, 30, 40 years ago. What did we end up with? A highly addictive product. If I give you a packet of sugar and say, go have a good time, you’ll look at me and say, “What are you talking about?” Add to that sugar fat, add texture, add mouth-feel, add color, add temperature, put it on every corner, make it into entertainment, and what do we end up with? One of the great public health crises of our times.

LG: Now I don’t think the food industry sees this as necessarily trying to build addiction or using these chemicals as a way to re-wire our brain. I think any good chef will tell you, I want to cook things that will please you, that make you happy. It just so happens that sugar, salt, and fat make us happy. So, what’s wrong with it, if that’s what we want?

DK: The argument that the food companies will use is that all their giving consumers is what they want. But we now know, we have the science to show, that these chemicals are activating the brains of millions of Americans and what happens is that we keep on coming back for more. Look at modern American food, pick any appetizer from any major American restaurant chain. What is it? It’s layered and loaded with fat, sugar, and salt.

LG: Well, let’s pick one you highlighted in your book, because I happen to like it, it’s the Southwest Egg Roll at Chilis. It’s tasty!

DK: The Washington Post outed me because I had to go dumpster diving in order to find out what was in restaurant foods. We worked for a decade at the FDA putting nutrition facts labeling on all foods in the Supermarket, but not so in the restaurant foods. If you look at the ingredients, some fifty ingredients: the sugars, the fat, the fat loaded on fat, the salt in that eggroll. One industry insider just called it the equivalent of a fat bomb.

LG: You spend a little bit of time in the book on how food is labeled. How, for example, cereal manufacturers hide just how much sugar is really in that box. How do they hide it?

DK: Different names on the label, not just sugar, they’ll use honey, they’ll use molasses, they’ll use other terms so its not the first ingredient listed on cereals. But, understand, its not just any one ingredient. We have made food highly stimulating. The multi-sensory nature of food, it’s a rollercoaster in the mouth. 30 years ago, we used to chew on the average of 30 times per bite. Now it’s less than half of that. Food goes down in a whoosh, it stimulates, it rarely lingers. In fact, most of what we are eating is so pre-digested. Chicken: I went in and ordered a margarita grilled chicken dish, I thought it was healthy. Little did I know it was bathed, it was mixed in these cement mixers with sugar and fat, our meat is injected with these needles, solutions are added, sure it tastes good. But in some ways it keeps us in this cycle of consumption. And understand the cycle of consumption based on past learning, past memory, we get cued. Our brains get activated. The cue can be as simple as a sight, a smell, a location, my car can be a cue! Because where I’ve gone before, I get in the car and start having these thoughts of wanting. I was walking down Powell street and I started thinking about chocolate covered pretzels. Why? Because I had been, six months earlier, a place on Powell street. I had forgotten entirely about it, we’re such effective learners—just walking down that street will create thoughts of wanting. Thoughts of wanting arouse me, they capture my attention, they pre-occupy me, I eat for that momentary pleasure. Next time I get cued, I do it again, and every time I engage in this cycle, I just strengthen the neural circuits. What am I in search of? I’m in search of this ephemeral pleasure, is there any real satisfaction? Rarely.

LG: Your book is called “The End of Overeating.” How do we stop overeating, when much of the food at the grocery store and the restaurants is prepared the way it is, we have all these visual cues, these reminders of how food is a reward in our lives. How do we stop that cycle, how do we break or rewire our brain back to a more healthy style of eating?

DK: First, we have to come to the understanding that our behavior is becoming conditioned and driven. And it’s not just our behavior, it’s the behavior of our children. And once we understand that, once we understand that food in fact has become hot stimuli, and preoccupy us and capture our brains, and hijack our brain circuits, and we can see this on the neural imaging. What we have to do is cool down the stimulus. How do you cool down a stimulus? First, you can just get rid of the cues. That sounds easy, you create a safe environment in your home, but you end up walking down the street so that’s not very practical. The other effective way is to eat with some structure. What do we do in The United States? By putting fat, sugar, and salt on every corner, eating 24/7, eating in our cars, eating all the time, we’ve taken down any boundaries. So eating with some structure—knowing what you’re going to eat, when you’re going to eat it, and if it’s food that you want, it helps protect you from being bombarded by cues, because if you know what you’re going to be eating in several of hours, the cues in the intervening time that you get hit with just don’t have the same power. In the end, what’s the best way to reduce and take the power out of a stimulus? How do you change what you want? Want something else more. What we have to do, and I think this is essential as a country, because social norms effect us, they really effect our behavior, they effect our neural circuitry. If I look at that huge plate of fries and say, “That’s my friend, that’s gonna make me feel better,” my brain’s going to get activated and then there’s nothing I can do to stop myself from finishing that plate of fries. If however, we change how we view food, psychologists call it a critical perceptual shift. How did we win, well, we haven’t quite won it but how did we succeed in the perceptual shift against tobacco? 30, 40 years ago we used to view the product as something that was cool, something that was socially acceptable, something that we wanted. We changed that perception. Now we look at it for what it is, a deadly, disgusting, addictive product. Tobacco is easy because we can live without tobacco. Food is much harder. But, all the processed foods, foods that stimulate us, that are just fat and sugar, fat and salt, fat and sugar and salt, getting us to come back for more and more, I think we have to change how we view food back, perhaps it’s very simple in the end, ho w much real food are we eating?

LG: You did the research, started 7 years ago, you wrote the book, now you’re talking about food on interviews like this. How has it changed your life?

DK: What’s very interesting, being trained as a physician, I thought I would go into the world and understand the metabolism, the endocrinology, the bariatrics, the physiology. What I actually gained in understanding was that we’re all wired to focus on the most salient stimuli in our environment. That’s what makes us so successful as a species. It could be alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, it could be gambling, but for many of us, food has become the most salient stimuli, and what about that food? It’s the fat, sugar, and salt. I look at that food and I say, I need it, it’s going to make me feel better, and I’ve come over time to understand that I can feel just fine, eat about half as much as I was eating but feel just as satisfied.

LG: David Kessler is the author of “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.” Thanks very much for speaking with us.

DK: Thank you.

Related Links

Midwest Kids Struggle With Obesity

The report card on fitness is in – and it concludes that there’s a lotof room for improvement. The federal government has been keeping trackof Americans’ heights and weights for more than 30 years now. And eachtime the survey is taken, it shows that the population is heavier. TheUpper Midwest is the heaviest region in the country. The Great LakesRadio Consortium’s Joan Siefert-Rose reports on the theories behind thisdramatic increase in obesity … and the special problems faced bychildren:

Are Today’s Kids Less Active?

The U-S Surgeon General recently declared childhood obesity as aproblem of epidemic proportion in this country. Over the last 30 years,children have been getting heavier, relative to their height. Today,one in five children is at least 20 percent above an optimal weight.The problem may not be so much what kids are eating … as it is what theyare doing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joan Siefert-Rose hasthis report: