Advertising sugary cereals to children needs regulation, report says

Food companies are continuing to push unhealthy cereals high in sugar content into the diets of young children through targeted television advertising despite pledges by leading companies to voluntarily regulate such advertising, according to a new analysis.

The report by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut, published Thursday in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, looked at the purchases of high-sugar children’s breakfast cereals by US households over nine years and how the amount of TV advertising directed to children versus adults impacted those choices. The authors said they found that advertising to children had a significant impact on cereal purchase decisions.

“Despite promises to only advertise healthier options directly to children and the availability of nutritious cereals in their product portfolios, cereal companies continue to market their least healthy products directly to children,” Jennifer Harris, lead author and senior research advisor at the Rudd Center, said in a statement.

“Our research provides strong evidence that discontinuing all advertising of nutritionally poor foods directly to children would likely negatively impact food companies’ bottom-line, which explains why they appear to resist doing the right thing for children’s health,” Harris said.

The paper cites statistics showing that two-thirds of US children consume more than the recommended limit for added sugar, or roughly 10% of daily calories, with cereals among the top food sources for added sugar in children’s diets.

Cereal was also the most-advertised children’s food category in 2021, representing 43% of food ads viewed by children on kids’ television programming.

Mandatory restrictions on advertising unhealthy foods directly to children are required to address negative effects of child-directed advertising on children’s diets and related health outcomes, the study concludes.

Currently, 21 top food and beverage companies participate in a voluntary system called the Children’s Food & Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) keeps. Each company has pledged not to direct food advertising to children or to advertise to children only foods that meet nutrition criteria that limits saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars in advertised foods and requires such foods to provide positive nutrients, said CFBAI Vice President Daniel Range.

“CFBAI established nutrition criteria for cereals advertised to kids where none existed before, and all cereal in child-directed advertising from companies in CFBAI features only cereals that do not exceed limits on added sugars, sodium and saturated fat and that provide positive nutrients,” Range said. “But just as significant is that companies today are engaging in substantially less child-directed food advertising, with a recent study finding a greater than 97% decline in children’s exposure to cereal ads on child-directed TV programming since 2013.” 

According to the Rudd paper, while the cereals with child-directed TV advertising did meet CFBAI nutrition criteria, their median added sugar content was still 12 grams per a 40-gram serving and none met government-defined nutrition criteria for foods that can be advertised abroad to children in the United Kingdom, for instance.

The study also reported that advertising to children had a greater effect on cereal purchases by Black households than on other households.

Participating cereal manufacturers have more nutritious products in their portfolios, but choose to market the unhealthy ones to kids, according to Harris.

“These companies do have healthy products.. they could advertise plain Cheerios instead of Honey Nut Cheerios but they don’t,” she said.

The authors said this is the first study to directly link children’s exposure to food advertising with product purchases in a large independent longitudinal sampling of households.

Childhood health was a key focus of contentious confirmation hearings this week as the senate took testimony from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated by President Donald Trump to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In his testimony, Kennedy warned of an “epidemic of chronic disease” and the toll on children.

More than 40% of US school-aged children and adolescents have at least one chronic health condition, such as asthma, obesity, behavior/learning problems or other conditions, according to the CDC. More than 20% of children ages 6-11 years old are obese, for instance, according to CDC data.

From 2002 to 2018, the number of young people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes doubled from 9 per 100,000 to 18 per 100,000 per year, the CDC data shows.

“There is no way we’re going to be able to substantially improve kids’ health until these companies stop marketing these products to children,” said Harris.

(Featured photo by Providence Doucet for Unsplash.)