Letter to FTC re: Request to Investigate Food Marketing to Children

CSPI and numerous other public health organizations and professionals urge the FTC to study 1. marketing expenditures by food and beverage companies to children and adolescents and 2. slotting fees, trade spend and other trade promotion practices in the retail grocery industry.

Healthy Restaurant Children’s Meals Improve Children’s Diets and Health

Restaurants and communities should support parents’ efforts to feed their children well.

Unilever’s doing better by kids. Will the rest of the industry take note?

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.

New study reveals one way soda and beverage companies market to children

Picture a large public university you may have visited or seen play a sport on television. Can you recall seeing Gatorade merchandise dotting the sidelines? Coca-Cola vending machines across campus? Those products and merchandise are likely there because the university and beverage company signed a pouring rights contract.

Kellogg: Marketing to kids

Demand letter led to Kellogg agreeing to adopt minimum nutrition standards for marketing to children.

CSPI hits marketing junk food to kids

Letter to CARU re: Kraft Heinz TV advertisements

This letter from CSPI to BBB National Programs' Children's Advertising Review Unit describes the context of a complaint filed against Kraft Heinz. On numerous occasions in late 2019, Kraft Heinz ran an advertisement for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese during children’s programming on networks such as Cartoon Network, Disney XD, and Nickelodeon in which it disparaged healthy foods, a longstanding feature of advertisements from Kraft Heinz. These ads are a violation of CARU’s guidelines on product presentations and disparagement. CSPI asks that CARU review Kraft Heinz’s advertising practices and work with the company to align their advertisements with CARU guidelines.

CSPI urges Kraft Heinz to end disparagement of healthy food in advertising

Kraft Heinz is disparaging healthy foods like broccoli, salmon, and tofu in advertising for its Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and other products—and it has done so on children’s television programming, according to a complaint filed today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest with BBB National Programs' Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU).

Cleveland City Council unanimously passes healthy kids' meals bill

Guest post: Building back better