Not many cereal brands agreed with the new federal government guidelines, so they’ve rejected them and are taking their own steps to to cutting back on unhealthy marketing to kids.
While the industry guidelines won’t be as broad or as harsh, what they lack in that area they make up for being specific and take actual steps in the direction of helping to stop unhealthy marketing to kids regardless:
The companies said the effort will vastly change what is advertised, forcing them to curb advertising on one out of three products currently marketed to children.
The new standards, which will allow companies to advertise food and beverage products to children if they meet certain nutritional criteria, could force some brands to change recipes to include less sodium, fat, sugars and calories. While many companies have trumpeted their own efforts to market healthier foods to kids, the agreement would apply the same standards to all of the participating companies.
“Now foods from different companies, such as cereals or canned pastas, will meet the same nutrition criteria, rather than similar but slightly different company-specific criteria,” said Elaine Kolish of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative.
This is an awesome step, but how specific are they actually getting? Well:
“The industry’s uniform standards are a significant advance, and are exactly the type of initiative the commission had in mind when we started pushing for self-regulation more than five years ago … we applaud industry for making healthy progress.”
While the government proposal put broad limits on fats, sugars and sodium that would apply to marketing of all foods, the industry has suggested different guidelines for different foods, saying that is a more practical approach.
The industry guidelines for children’s cereals, for example, would allow them to be advertised if they have around 10 grams of sugar a serving, while the formula used by the government would discourage advertising for cereals that have 8 grams of sugars in an equivalent serving. That would mean General Mills would still be able to advertise Honey Nut Cheerios cereal under the industry guidelines but would be discouraged under the voluntary government guidelines. Other sugary cereals such as Trix, Lucky Charms and Count Chocula would also make the cut under the industry numbers.
Another difference between the proposals is where companies are allowed to advertise. While the government guidelines are broad, discouraging advertising of unhealthy foods on packaging and in stores, along with in the media, the industry guidelines would apply to media – television, radio, print, video games and the Internet – but not packaging. That means the little bee on the front of the Honey Nut Cheerios box and the rabbit on the Trix box would stay under the industry proposal and go under the government draft.
We think that this is a great compromise. It really does show initiative on the industry’s part to take steps in the same direction that the feds want them to go, without losing all control.
We’ll be eager to see how the feds respond!
Now we want some Lucky Charms, ha!
[Image via AP Images.]