

To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist.

They did the latter by proposing their own much weaker set of guidelines, and calling the effort the Better Business Bureau’s Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. The industry responded by both lobbying to weaken the guidelines and convincing the Federal Trade Commission to back off completely. The group came up with two sets of proposed nutrition guidelines - one would take effect in 2016 and another in 2021. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Federal Trade Commission. Congress in 2009 called for the formation of the “Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children” (IWG), which is made up of members from several federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. So the question is: What to do about this? How can we stop food companies from marketing these “breakfast candies” to children? Believe it or not, the government did make an attempt to step in. Somehow, reading a nutrition label and seeing that Honey Smacks has 20 grams (that’s nearly five teaspoons) of sugar per serving does not have the same impact as slapping a label on the box that reads, “Warning: Equivalent to Eating a Twinkie.”ĮWG also notes that many children’s cereals are high in sodium as well sugar and salt are two of the Big Three ingredients (fat is the other) that food companies pour into their recipes to keep consumers eating after they’re full. While many Grist readers probably don’t serve their children sweetened breakfast cereal, millions of Americans do, and they are blitzed by billions of dollars in advertising telling them to do it. And this report from EWG provides even more evidence.
