I'm looking at you, Captain Crunch

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that advertising industry representatives have agreed to tighten the guidelines for advertising aimed at children under 12. In addition, 10 food and beverage companies have agreed to devote half their advertising to promoting healthy choices to children.

The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies tackled this issue last year with its Committee on Food Marketing and the Diet of Youths and Children. Among the committee members was Richard Scheines, the head of the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon.

The group was charged with examining the influence that food marketing has over children's diets, and whether it has contributed to the nation's rising obesity epidemic. Scheines, an expert in causal discovery, was part of a subcommittee that performed a systematic review of all research into the effects of food marketing that has been published over the past 40 years.

The committee concluded that food marketing aimed at children ages 12 and under leads them to consume high-calorie, low-nutrient products, and that children need more information about proper nutrition in order to create lifelong, healthy eating habits.

The committee's findings come with several caveats, however. Scheines said that most of the existing research deals only with television advertising, which represents a declining share of food marketing dollars. And while TV advertising does influence children's behavior, the evidence is too weak to conclude that it has a direct tie to childhood obesity, he said.

"There's much, much more research that's needed. If there is an effect, and it's not entirely clear there is, then it's small compared to other factors, such as the parental example," Scheines said.

To view the committee's full report, click here. 

Jonathan Potts