Policy addressing marketing in other community settings
Corporations understand that children are a lucrative market. Kids in the U.S. have tremendous purchasing power: Children between 3 and 11 years old bought or influenced the purchase of $18 billion worth of products and entertainment in 2005.1 But marketers don’t just want to reach children to sell their products now; they want to develop customers for life.
To make this happen, food and beverage marketers target children constantly, starting when they are very young and reaching out to them in as many places as possible. These locations include community settings such as grocery stores, sporting events, zoos, children’s museums and more.
Below are some policy goals that parents, advocates and policymakers can push for to help reduce the marketing of unhealthy foods and drinks to kids and teens:
- Levy state and local taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages and use funds to pay for obesity prevention and other public health, nutrition, and physical activity programs.*
- Implement policies that ensure healthy food offerings on government property.
- Require that check-out areas of stores are free of candy, sugar-sweetened beverages, and other low-nutrition foods.
- Ban food sales in non-food retail outlets.
- Prohibit the sale of low-nutrition foods and beverages in zoos, children’s museums, boys and girls clubs, athletic venues, and other settings frequented by children.*
*Policy priority, rated highest for achievability and effectiveness.
Learn more
Healthy government properties
Local-food purchasing policy — Woodbury County, IA
Strategic Alliance
Vending machine nutrition standards
Los Angeles County, CA
Vending policy: All public vending machines shall contain 100% healthy snack and beverage offerings — Chula Vista, CA
Strategic Alliance
Soft-drink taxes
Revenue calculator for sugar-sweetened beverage taxes
Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity
Soft-drink tax policy brief [pdf]
Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity
Website: Liquid candy: How soft drinks are harming America’s health
Center for Science in the Public Interest. Site includes fact sheets, tax calculator, backgrounders.
Model sugar-sweetened beverage tax legislation
National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity
State and local policy options
Reducing junk food marketing to children: State and local policy options for advocates and policy makers
Center for Science in the Public Interest
Slowing down fast food: A policy guide for healthier kids and families [pdf]
Corporate Accountability International
Fighting junk food marketing to kids: A toolkit for local advocates [pdf]
Berkeley Media Studies Group
Food-marketing resolution — 2004 [pdf]
State of California
References
