Comprehensive policies needed to reduce marketing of sugary drinks to kids
by: Pamela Mejia
posted on Monday, November 14, 2011
Recent research from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity highlights the need for comprehensive policies that address the multiple channels marketers use to sell sugary drinks to children. On October 31, the Rudd Center released Sugary Drink FACTS, a comprehensive study of the nutritional quality and marketing of sugar-sweetened beverages like soda, energy drinks, and fruit drinks. Although companies have promised to limit their marketing to children, youth are still bombarded with advertising for sugary beverages.
Sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages are the single largest source of excess calories for children. Limited policies, like bans restricting sugary drink sales on school campuses, don’t reduce overall consumption. While these bans are a positive first step, they alone are ineffective because children have many opportunities to purchase and consume these beverages outside of school.
Policy makers and public health advocates have a unique opportunity to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic through policies that regulate marketing of sugar-sweetened beverages. These policies should be comprehensive and far-reaching. It is not enough to limit regulation to one environment, like a school campus, because children are bombarded with multiple levels of aggressive and invasive advertising every day — on their cell phones, their computers, their televisions, and in the spaces where they live, travel, and play.