"A Political Lesson on the Power of the Food Industry"
There have been calls to ban the advertising of sugary cereals
to children for nearly a half century,
a product that Harvard nutrition professor Jean Mayer
referred to as “sugar-coated nothings.”
In a senate hearing on nutrition education, he said,
“Properly speaking, they ought to be called cereal-flavored candy,
rather than sugar-covered cereals.”
The Senate committee invited the major manufacturers
of children’s cereals to testify.
And they initially said yes— until they heard what kind
of questions that were going to be asked.
One cereal industry representative candidly admitted
why they decided to boycott the hearing:
they simply didn’t have persuasive answers
for why they’re trying to sell kids breakfast candy.
In the Mad Men age before the consumer movement was in bloom,
ad “company executives were more willing to talk frankly
about the purpose of their ads and how they felt about
aiming the ads at the quote-unquote child market."
A quote from the executive director of Kellogg’s ad firm:
“Our primary goal is to sell products to children, not educate them.
When you sell a woman a product and she goes into the store
and finds your brand isn’t in stock, she’ll probably forget about it.
But when you sell a kid on your product,
if he can’t get it, he will throw himself on the floor,
stamp his feet and cry.
You can’t get a reaction like that out of an adult.”
Sugary cereals are the #1 food advertised to kids,
but not to worry, the industry will just self-regulate.
The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative
was launched in which all the big cereal companies
pledged they would only market healthier dietary choices to kids.
The candy industry signed on too.
How did that go?
They pledged not to advertise to kids,
yet after the initiative went into effect
kids actually saw more candy ads.
Take Hershey for example— doubled their advertising
to children while at the same time pledging not to.
The cereal companies got to decide for themselves
their own definitions of quote-unquote “healthier dietary choices;”
so, that should give us a sense of how serious
they are at protecting children.
They chose Froot Loops and Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs,
consisting of up to 44% sugar by weight—
those are what they classified as “healthier dietary choices.”
What are their unhealthy choices?
Turns out what they did is basically just set the limit
based more on what they were already selling,
than what might be best for children.
Now they’ve since revised that down to only allow cereals
that are 38% sugar by weight.
But, look, even if they were only a third sugar,
that means kids are effectively eating a spoonful of sugar
for every three spoons of cereal—
not exactly a healthier dietary choice.
The Federal Trade Commission tried stepping in back in 1978,
but the industry poured in so many millions of lobbying
might that Congress basically threatened to yank
the entire agency’s funding should they mess with Big Cereal,
demonstrating just “how powerful market forces are,
compared to those that can be mobilized on behalf of children.”
The political “post-traumatic stress induced by the aggressive attacks
on the FTC led to a 25-year hiatus in federal efforts
to rein in food marketing aimed at children.”
But finally, enter: the Interagency Working Group,
“voluntary principles designed to encourage stronger
and more meaningful self-regulation,"
proposed by the Federal Trade Commission, CDC, FDA, and USDA,
with the radical suggestion of not marketing
children cereals that are over 26% pure sugar.
Not a single one of the top ten breakfast cereals
marketed to children would meet that standard.
General Mills shot back that such proposed nutrition standards
were “arbitrary, capricious, and fundamentally flawed.”
No surprise since literally every single cereal they market
wouldn't make the cut.
To suggest voluntary standards would unconstitutionally violate
their right to free speech under the First Amendment,
to which the FTC basically said: uh, let me get you a dictionary.
Voluntary.
How could suggesting voluntary
guidelines violate the constitution?
That’s how freaked out the industry is, though,
at even the notion of meaningful guidelines.
One grocer’s association called the proposed nutrition principles
the “most bizarre and unconscionable” they had ever seen.
So, what happened?
Again, agency funding was jeopardized;
and so, the FTC called the interagency proposal off.
At every level of government, the food and beverage industries
have won fight after fight, nearly never losing
a significant political battle in the United States.
“We just got beat,” one of the child advocacy organizations said,
“Money wins.”
And it took lots of money, $175 million of Big Food lobbying,
but apparently enough to buy the White House’s silence
as the interagency proposal got killed off.
As one Obama advisor put it, “you can tell someone to eat less fat,
consume more fiber, more fruits and vegetables, and less sugar.
But if you start naming foods, you cross the line.”
“I’m upset with the White House,”
the chair of the Senate Health Committee said.
“They went wobbly in the knees, and when it comes to kids’ health,
they shouldn’t go wobbly in the knees.”