Commercializing Childhood: Food Advertising in Public Schools
Creators: name: Boudreau, Elizabeth
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2012

description: Childhood obesity is a problem of increasing severity in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled since 1980. The causes of this change include an increase in portion sizes, the lack of leisure-time physical activity, the ease of obtaining calorically dense foods (and relative difficulty of obtaining healthy foods), and the effects of marketing on food consumption. Obesity has high costs, both financially and personally. Obese Americans are at a higher risk for four of the five leading causes of death (heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, and stroke). As public schools have lost funding due to the economic downturn and falling property values, food advertising in schools has become more common. Food advertising to children is remarkably effective and typically consists of unhealthy, highly processed products. Advertising influences children's consumption patterns, adiposity, and food purchase requests. Although marketers claim that advertising in schools generates much-needed revenue that can be used to support educational activities, the amount of revenue generated can actually be quite small as a proportion of districts' total operating budgets, and several districts raised no income at all. Although efforts have been made to legislate food marketing to children at the federal level, action on the issue has been lacking. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations currently govern the sale of junk food in schools, but do not address marketing. Efforts to legislate the marketing of these foods have met with constant failure. Yet, there is reason to hope: school districts, and even states, have taken the issue of food marketing into their own hands, creating policies that improve the school environment for young learners by limiting the amount of corporate advertising they are exposed to on a daily basis. In 2004, the federal government passed the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act. A provision of this law mandates that school districts have local school wellness policies that address healthy eating and physical activity. A joint program of the California Department of Public Health and the Public Health Institute, California Project LEAN, has made the sensible suggestion that food advertising be incorporated into these wellness policies. In addition, it is the author's belief that education surrounding marketing and persuasive tactics be incorporated into school health and nutrition curricula to foster critical thinking skills and arm children with much-needed information on how advertising plays into their decision-making process. These skills would serve students both inside of the school buildings as well as in the broader commercialized environment in which they live. Furthermore, a media literacy education could have long-term, positive health effects. Incorporating these lessons into curricula can occur in conjunction with interactive activities, allowing students to assist in monitoring compliance with advertising policies, provide an educational opportunity, ensure that marketing bans are upheld, and that the wellness of our children is put before the interests of corporations.