Pear in Mind: A Blog in the Public Interest

Food marketing is a big business. In the US, food and beverage companies spend upwards of $2 billion each year to advertise their products to children, knowing that this advertising can influence children’s food preferences, food beliefs, and purchase requests. Regulation of food marketing to kids in the U.S. has largely been left up to companies themselves and their self-regulation has been rather uninspiring—but that may be changing, albeit slowly.

In late April, food manufacturer Unilever announced that it was updating its food marketing to kids guidelines, raising the age of children covered from children under the age of 12 to children under the age of 16. Shortly after Unilever’s announcement, the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a food industry self-regulatory body, announced that it was also updating its guidelines for marketing food to kids, raising the age of children covered from children under the age of 12 to children under the age of 13. The group also announced that Hostess would be joining, bringing the number of participating companies to 20.

Industry self-regulation of food marketing to kids is far from perfect, often leaving major loopholes or failing to prove effective. With its recent updates, Unilever is taking steps in the right direction. When you compare Unilever's new and improved standards to CFBAI’s standards, CFBAI’s shortcomings become glaringly obvious.

For example, Unilever will not direct any marketing communications to children under the age of 16. For measured media (traditional media, such as television or radio), the company will not advertise to an audience if children under the age of 16 represent over 25 percent of the audience. CFBAI permits advertising to children under the age of 13 if products meet CFBAI nutrition standards. For measured media, these nutrition standards apply when children ages 2-12 constitute at least 30 percent of the audience. It’s important to note that recent research found that the products that meet CFBAI’s nutrition standards for marketing to kids aren’t all that healthy—only 63 percent of CFBAI-compliant products had a healthy nutrition profiling index score of at least 64 out of 100, and the median score was 68. Furthermore, Unilever’s pledge is global in nature, while the CFBAI pledge only applies within the U.S.

Unilever still has some room for improvement. The company can continue to improve by eliminating its allowed use of licensed characters or giveaways in point-of-sale communications for its Responsibly Made for Kids-labeled products, which its commitment still allows for.

In a perfect world, the federal government would proactively regulate food marketing to kids, without the exceptions allowed in the CFBAI and Unilever guidelines. Until then, Unilever is helping raise the bar for industry self-regulation. Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call for CFBAI and its member companies. Unilever is setting a standard that consumers may come to expect from similar brands. It's time for a meaningful update to CFBAI food marketing to kids' guidelines; otherwise, member companies may soon be left in the dust.