Tag: children
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Rudd Center Claims Children Choose and Prefer Branded Snacks
Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has published a study purportedly showing that children “significantly preferred” snack foods branded with popular cartoon characters. Christina Roberto, et al., “Influence of Licensed Characters on Children’s Taste and Snack Preferences,” Pediatrics, June 2010. Researchers apparently asked 40 children between 4 and 6 years old to…
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Calling Use of Toys to Market Happy Meals® Illegal, CSPI Threatens Lawsuit
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has notified McDonald’s Corp. that it intends to sue the company within 30 days if it does not immediately stop using toys to market its Happy Meals® to young children. The letter characterizes the practice as “illegal, because marketing to kids under eight is (1) inherently…
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FTC Gets Tough with Kellogg over Immunity Claims; Company Agrees to New Restrictions
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week announced that Kellogg Co. has agreed to resolve an “investigation into questionable immunity-related claims for Rice Krispies cereal.” The agreement reopens a prior order involving Kellogg’s® Frosted Mini-Wheats®; the FTC will now require “substantiation for all health claims for any food” based on “competent and reliable scientific evidence,” defined…
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Mexico Adopts Stringent School Food Rules to Combat Obesity
Mexican health officials have reportedly unveiled stringent guidelines that would prohibit the sale of processed or fried foods on school grounds. According to media sources, the regulations would ban soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages along with more traditional fare such as meat tortas, tamarind candy and atole, unless they were reformulated to meet nutritional…
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FTC Announces Plan to Study Food, Beverage Marketing Targeted to Kids
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced its intention to issue compulsory process orders to 48 food and beverage manufacturers, distributors, marketers, and quick service restaurant companies for information on their marketing activities and expenditures targeted toward children and adolescents. FTC also seeks nutritional information about the companies’ food and beverage products marketed to children…
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Alice Lichtenstein, David Ludwig, “Bring Back Home Economics Education,” Journal of the American Medical Association, May 11, 2010
Tufts University Professor Alice Lichtenstein and Harvard Medical School Professor David Ludwig team up in this commentary to advocate bringing back home economics to school classrooms as a way to combat the country’s childhood obesity epidemic. “Instruction in basic food preparation and meal planning skills needs to be part of any long-term solution,” they write.…
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Jennifer Pomeranz, “Television Food Marketing to Children Revisited: The Federal Trade Commission Has the Constitutional and Statutory Authority to Regulate,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Spring 2010
Authored by the director of legal initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, this article purports to demonstrate that food and beverage advertising to children is deceptive and misleading speech and therefore not protected under the First Amendment. According to the author, because this speech is not protected, the Federal…
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Advocacy Organization Report Calls for Protection of Young Agricultural Workers
Human Rights Watch has issued a report titled “Fields of Peril: Child Labor in US Agriculture” that describes the working conditions facing the nation’s youngest field laborers and calls for changes to federal employment and environmental laws to provide them with greater protections. According to the report, child farmworkers as young as age 12 often…