Federal Trade Commission, Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have joined together to propose new guidelines that prevent companies from marketing junk food to children.
Instead, their proposal urges companies to only market foods to kids between the ages of 2 and 17 IF they are low in fats, sugars and sodium, or basically, HEALTHY!
This could be good news for a nation that finds one in three children is overweight or obese, but bad news for Tony the tiger.
If companies sign on to the guidelines, children may be seeing much less or even saying goodbye to the colorful cartoon characters used to advertise cereals or other snacks.
Or in a more positive outlook, companies would be forced to just start selling healthier food by reducing the unhealthy ingredients in their products if they wanted to continue using distracting advertising gimmicks Tony.
Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa believes this is finally a step in the right direction for our country, saying:
“Kids are being bombarded daily with ads for unhealthy foods and it is long past time that we limit the amount of junk food advertising.”
We agree, but would hate to see our childhood memories be erased (we mourned for days after ALMOST losing Cap’n Crunch earlier this year) because, lets be honest, cartoons are fun!
If cartoon characters can encourage kids to eat unhealthy food, why can’t they be used to encourage them to eat healthy food?
