Government Outlines Children's Marketing Guidelines

Four federal agencies have cobbled together voluntary rules for food and beverages advertised to children between the ages of 2 and 17.

May 02, 2011

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The federal government has finally come up with voluntary rules for advertising to children, Marketing Daily reports. As directed by Congress two years ago, the four agencies?"U.S. Department of Agriculture, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Federal Trade Commission and Food and Drug Administration?"worked together on the guidelines.

The proposal asks that food manufacturers?"and restaurants?"follow outlined limits on added sugars, sodium, saturated fat and trans fat in foods and beverages promoted to kids. The group also recommends that those companies "encourage children to choose foods that make meaningful contributions to a healthful diet from food groups including vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk products, fish, extra-lean meat and poultry, eggs, nuts or seeds, and beans" in their ads and commercials.

The guidelines want these companies to meet specific nutritional and advertising benchmarks by 2016 with full implementation by 2021. Ten categories were targeted under the proposal as areas of focus: baked goods, breakfast cereals, carbonated and non-carbonated beverages, dairy products, frozen and chilled desserts, prepared foods/meals, restaurant foods and snack foods.

The agencies are accepting comments for 45 days, which includes a forum to be held May 24 in the District of Columbia. The group will collect feedback before sending their final report to Congress.

"The food industry spent more than $1.6 billion in 2006 alone to market messages to kids promoting foods that often are high in calories and low in nutrition," according to the report. "Their campaigns use television, the Internet, social media, video games, movies, sports and music events, in-store displays and packaging and even schools."

A new study from the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and Association of National Advertisers found that the average number of beverage and food commercials seen during kid??s programming by those between the ages of 2 and 11 dropped by 50 percent from 2004 to 2010. "In recent years, food and beverage companies have adopted strict nutrition standards that have fundamentally changed the advertising landscape," said Pamela G. Bailey, president/CEO of GMA. "Since 2005, there has been a significant decrease in overall food and beverage advertising on children's programs, coupled with a dramatic increase in ads featuring healthier product choices and healthy lifestyle messages."

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