“This summer, McDonald’s is launching its latest marketing campaign for kids, partnering with Twentieth Century Fox to use characters and promotions featuring the highly-anticipated newest chapter in the 'Ice Age' film franchise. "

  McDonald's PR Newswire       

                                June 18, 2009

"Food marketing for kids is increasingly focused on parents—reassuring them with positive health, education, and family-friendly associations, while doing little to change the nutritional content of their products. Food industries invest billions in marketing directed at children to harness brand loyalty for life."

Starting Kids Young

Creating an environment in which nutritious food is the norm for children and youth sets the stage for lifelong health. Yet the prevailing pattern of food and beverage marketing to children in America is characterized by the aggressive promotion of highly processed, unhealthy foods to children and to their parents.  For advocates working to limit food marketing to kids, this page contains tools and resources to support efforts at the local, state, and national levels.

This page contains tools and resources for advocates seeking to impose stricter regulation in marketing to children.

Food Marketing Talking Points for Advocates

Here are some talking points which will help support your argument when writing letters to newspaper editors and op-ed columns, or pitching a story to a journalist.

Letters to the Editor

• Saying no to SpongeBob

  Sana Chehimi, Oakland

  (Washington Post, December 12, 2005)

• School ban on sweet drinks

  Leslie Mikkelsen, MPH, RD

  (New York Times, May 4, 2006)

Related Resources

• Where's The Fruit?

In January 2007, the Strategic Alliance drew attention to the food and beverage industry’s misleading packaging techniques directed towards children and parents by releasing this study, which examined heavily advertised children’s food products, concluding that despite numerous references to fruit on the packaging, more than two-thirds (68%) of the products either contained no fruit at all or only minimal amounts of fruit. This link also includes the follow-up report, "When Will There Be Fruit?"

"Where's the Fruit?" Copy Points

• Food Marketing to Children: Threat or Opportunity?

In December 2006, the Institute of Medicine released this report, reviewing the influence of food marketing on the diets of children.

• Newspaper Coverage of Childhood Nutrition Policies

In August 2001, Berkeley Media Studies Group analyzed newspaper coverage of policy debates around childhood nutrition in order to give advocates a thorough grounding in the way their issue is being portrayed in the news and thus, by extension, being presented to policy makers and the public.

• Fighting Junkfood Marketing for Kids: A Toolkit for Advocates

This toolkit provides neighborhood residents, parents, teachers and young people with the tools necessary to confront food & beverage marketing that interferes with creating healthy eating environments in their neighborhoods.