Food Marketers Up To Their Old Trix
CARU Endorses Campaign for Sugary Cereals
By Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free
Childhood denounced the Children’s
Advertising Review Unit (CARU), the
advertising industry’s self-appointed
regulatory body, for endorsing a new
campaign by General Mills to sell
sugary cereals to young children.
The General Mills’ campaign features
commercials for cereals such as Trix,
Cocoa Pebbles, and Lucky Charms,
immediately preceded or followed by
faux public service announcements
touting the benefits of eating
breakfast, thus creating the impression
that these sugary cereals are a healthy
choice for children. Elizabeth
Lascoutx, CARU’s director, claimed the
campaign will encourage healthful
behavior and declared, “This is exactly
what a leader in the food industry
should be doing.”
“Endorsing this campaign is exactly
what a regulatory agency should not be
doing,” responded CCFC’s Dr. Allen
Kanner, co-editor of Psychology and
Consumer Culture. “Targeting children
with ads for sugar cereals disguised as
PSA’s is cynical, deceitful, and
manipulative. CARU should demand that
General Mills immediately end this
campaign. That they chose instead to
endorse it simply proves what we’ve
suspected all along: CARU is a PR firm
for the advertising industry and their
clients, not a legitimate regulatory
body.”
“This is just more evidence that the
advertising industry is unwilling or
incapable of regulating itself,” added
Alvin F. Poussaint, MD of the Judge
Baker Children’s Center. “Childhood
obesity is a critical public health
problem. If we are serious about
addressing it and other marketing
related problems for children, we
should start by recognizing that self-
regulation has failed. It’s time to
consider legislation, like Senator Tom
Harkin’s HeLP America Act, that would
restore the government’s ability to
regulate an industry that brazenly
disregards children’s health.”
To learn more about the advertising
industry’s failed experiment in self-
regulation, please see CCFC’s comments
for the upcoming Federal Trade
Commission workshop on Marketing, Self-
Regulation, and Childhood Obesity:
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/c
omments/ftcsummary.htm.
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free
Childhood is a national coalition of
health care professionals, educators,
advocacy groups and concerned parents
who counter the harmful effects of
marketing to children through action,
advocacy, education, research, and
collaboration among organizations and
individuals who care about children.
CCFC supports the rights of children to
grow up – and the rights of parents to
raise them – without being undermined
by rampant consumerism. For more
information, please visit:
www.commercialfreechildhood.org
