Eleven of the nation's biggest food and beverage companies are junking ads for junk food on kids' TV shows.
Products include candy bars, soda pop and sugar-laden cereals, including such brands as Trix -- famously advertised for decades as being "for kids."
The voluntary pledge was announced at a Federal Trade Commission forum Wednesday morning in Washington. Companies aim to placate legislators who may crack down on food marketing amid rampant childhood obesity.
But critics say that the self-regulated pledges don't go far enough, and that advertising guidelines without an industrywide standard or method of enforcement won't do much good.
"We shouldn't be counting on the food industry to safeguard public health," said Susan Linn, a Harvard professor and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "Corporations are bound by law to increase shareholder profits, not to promote the well-being of children."
The pledges, from companies such as Coca-Cola Co. and Hershey Co., vary widely but largely restrict advertising on programming or media targeted at kids younger than 12.
That's a sore point for critics, who say that kids don't watch only cartoons and Nickelodeon shows. According to Nielsen data, for instance, Fox's "American Idol" attracted 2.4 million viewers ages 2 to 11 years old in May. Coca-Cola is a sponsor of "American Idol," and its messages appear frequently throughout the program.
The other companies involved are Cadbury Adams USA, Campbell Soup Co., General Mills Inc., Kellogg Co., Kraft Foods Inc., Mars Inc., McDonald's USA, PepsiCo Inc. and Unilever.
The pledges all loosely follow U.S. Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines, but to varying degrees. General Mills, for instance, will stop marketing to kids anything with more than 12 grams of sugar and 175 calories per serving. But sugary cereals such as Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs still pass the test. And Kellogg's policy, which was introduced this year in response to threatened litigation, still allows Frosted Flakes cereal and Fruit Twistables snacks to be marketed to kids, said Margot Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
"This gets rid of marketing of the very worst junk food," she said, "but it doesn't mean that only truly healthy foods are going to be marketed to kids."
