Responsible advertising of food industry

A new Federal Trade Commission report finds that the nation's largest food and beverage companies spent about $1.6 billion in 2006 to market products to children and teenagers.

 The report, Marketing Food to Children
and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and
Self-Regulation, finds that 44 major food and beverage marketers
spent $1.6 billion to promote their products to children under 12 and
adolescents ages 12 to 17 in the United States in 2006.
The
report finds that approximately $870 million was spent on
child-directed marketing, and a little more than $1 billion on
marketing to adolescents, with about $300 million overlapping between
the two age groups in 2006. Marketers spent more money on television
advertising than on any other technique ($745 million or 46 percent
of the 2006 total.)

The report finds that, although there
is room for improvement, the food and beverage industries have made
significant progress since the FTC and the Department of Health and
Human Services co-sponsored the Workshop on Marketing,
Self-Regulation & Childhood Obesity in 2005. The report cites the
Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, launched by
the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) in 2006, for taking
“important steps to encourage better nutrition and fitness among
the nation’s children,” by changing the mix of food and beverage
advertising messages directed to children under 12 and encouraging
them toward healthier eating and better physical fitness.