Society to kids: You're on your own

Last week, the Chicago Tribune featured a front page report on the marketing of sugar-saturated, nutrient-deficient cereals to kids. It revealed how in spite of a commitment by leading cereal companies in 2006 to market more healthy options to children under 12, most had made very little progress since: still "aggressively" promoting unhealthy products and, what's worse, under fraudulent promises like a "nutritious way to start the day."

"Now more than two-thirds of the cereals advertised by members participating in the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative--including General Mills, Kellogg, Post and Quaker--have 11 grams of sugar or less per serving," Julie Deardorff reported for the Tribune.

In the 1980s, 100 million was spent selling kids commodities. Three decades later, more than $17 billion is surrendered annually to this end. There's a reason why, and it's not so hard to come by: children, vulnerable to catchy slogans and enrapturing graphics, can persuade parents into doing things they normally would want no part of. If you've ever watched a kid convulsing by a cereal aisle, you understand how easily cajoled parents are into satisfying kids' desires--even when deleterious to their wellbeing.  

Deardorff reported, based on a recent Yale University study, that $156 million was spent promoting cereals to kids in 2008--highest for any other "category of packaged food." And most--if not all--contained high doses of sugar; some up to 43%. "When we looked at the nutritional quality of [the] cereal, we realized it's not just that the companies are marketing unhealthy products to children," lead author Jennifer Harris is quoted. "It's that they are only marketing unhealthy products."

The average preschooler, it was noted, viewed more than 500 cereal TV ads in 2008. For lack of diversity in advertising, most kids "would have to watch 10 hours of television before ... one ad for healthy food" appears. In simpler terms, kids are carpet-bombed with unsafe options.

The Tribune feature also reported cereal targeted at kids "have a whopping 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber and 60 percent more sodium than those aimed at adults."

Early December last year, USA TODAY published a stunning exposé which revealed how tainted beef, deemed unsafe by public health officials, was shipped to school cafeterias and served to students. The report, implicating corruption and negligence and graft as enabling the galling episode, merely confirmed the obvious: kids--or "stray animals," as some enlightened South Carolina gubernatorial candidate recently described--are not a healthy investment. How else to explain why beef containing salmonella poisoning was recalled, with residents even asked to "throw out" any products feared contaminated, but the welfare of children never factored in as critical?

You might pick up on a trend here: different set of options--indeed different standards--used to address the concerns of kids than that applied with adults.

Take a stroll through any public school cafeteria today and revel in the virtuosity of items prepared for kids. And as if fatty, grease-begotten foods weren't bad enough, now kids are at risk to poisoned beef in the one institution once thought of safe and secure for young people.

It's time we stare ourselves down, take cold-hard looks at what we've become, and begin making strong amends.

I recently spoke with nutrition expert Sean Croxton, founder of UndergroundWellness.com, on the implications of the Tribune report and Yale Study. Parents cannot afford to depend on the promises of giant food companies because "although the food companies may put out a press release saying that they're going to take X and Y ingredients out of foods, very seldom do they actually follow through. It's just good Public Relations," he said. "It just perpetuates what a lot of people think about the food companies--that they're really nice people; that they really care about us." But for profit-driven corporations, only one factor counts: profit: "If advertising to children is what's bringing in the money, why would they stop it?" And with the "nag factor" proved effective for decades, it's illogical to expect direct marketing to undergo a radical change anytime soon.

It would be just as pointless to call for government regulations because, like it or not, many elected officials "work in cahoots with the cooperations." Take, for example, Michael Taylor, current senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA, who worked previously as lawyer and, later, Vice President for Public Policy of biotech giant Monsanto.    

The bigger problem, Croxton suggests, is the responsibility of parents to make more ethical choices on behalf of their kids. Often times, what is advertised on TV or displayed on billboards, or composed as Rap jingles, or endorsed by star athletes, ends up "not just as a treat--these are the kids' diets." And the alarm bells should ring much louder in parents' heads because "you can't develop [kids'] brains and bodies without proper ingredients."

Most kids watch TV for 4 hours or more daily. Studies show kids are exposed to over 30,000 TV ads annually. Consider how retooled the brains of such kids become after ingraining series of commercials suggesting sugary cereals, greasy burgers, artificially-flavored pop drinks, sodium-rich snacks, genetically-modified fruits are the only options worth considering when shopping at the grocery store or lunching at a fast food canteen.   

And even for vigilant parents, as reported by ABC News recently, food giants have found successful techniques for reaching kids directly--such as soda company Fanta employing "technology" which lets teens "send audio messages to each other at high frequencies, sounds that adults over 25 cannot hear."

In her report, Julie Deardorff mentioned that websites have been set up to keep kids "engaged" even when not in front of a TV screen. "Millsberry.com and Postopia.com, the largest youth-targeted cereal Web sites, are designed to keep children engaged in a branded environment," she wrote. "On Millsberry, where visitors can design an avatar and explore the 'Millsberry' city, Trix, Lucky Charms and Honey Nut Cheerios were each prominently featured on the majority of the pages."

We live in a society that has convinced itself kids aren't worth the wait anymore. It is now more rational to medicate or incarcerate misbehaving children, rather than seek therapeutic avenues that offer multi-dimensional aid. It is now more rational to bombard kids with fast food and other forms of unhealthy diets, rather than provide nutritionally-balanced options that foster proper-eating habits and reduce sickness and disease. It is now more rational and natural to abandon kids in front of TV screens, exposed to unregulated streams of insidious programming, rather than spend quality time in democratic dialogue about our world and its challenges.

William James warned a century ago about such indifference to suffering, stating it was at "the root of most human injustices and cruelties, and the trait in human character most likely to make the angels weep." Society, in dealing with kids, has outdone itself.  

The only visible way out of this tunnel we are currently trapped within is through "education--each one teach one." Getting out, however, almost seems Utopian since, as Croxton laments, "we're lazy--we're the laziest people on earth."

Two Poignant Commentaries On These Issues: