Parents sue over 'junk food' TV ads

Parents and consumer groups in the US are suing the owner of a children’s TV network and cereal maker Kellogg in a bid to end junk food marketing to youngsters on television.

They want Viacom, which owns Nickelodeon, to stop showing adverts for sugary and fatty treats when more than 15% of its audience is made up of under-eights.

Two Massachusetts parents, together with the Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, are also demanding that the companies stop marketing such foods through websites, toy giveaways and competitions.

They are citing a recent report from the government-chartered Institute of Medicine, which concluded that food and drink companies were using TV adverts to entice children into eating large quantities of unhealthy food, causing a leap in childhood obesity.

Washington-based CSPI, a non-profit nutrition lobby group, said it had analysed food advertising on Nickelodeon and during Saturday-morning TV shows as well as in magazines and food packages.

The majority of the food adverts involving both companies were for nutrition-poor foods, it said.

Executive director Michael Jacobson said: “Nickelodeon and Kellogg engage in business practices that literally sicken our children.

“Their marketing tactics are designed to convince kids that everything they hear from their parents about food is wrong.

“It’s a multimedia brainwashing and re-education campaign – and a disease-promoting one at that.”

The plaintiffs are citing a recent report documenting the influence of marketing on what children eat.

Mother-of-three Sherri Carlson, from Wakefield, Massachusetts, who together with Andrew Leong, from Brookline, intends to sue the companies, said she tried her best to get her children to eat healthy foods.

“But then they turn on Nickelodeon and see all those enticing junk-food ads,” she said.

“Adding insult to injury, we enter the grocery store and see our beloved ‘Nick’ characters plastered on all those junky snacks and cereals.”

The plaintiffs served the required 30 days’ notice of their lawsuit yesterday.

Both companies said they had enduring commitments to healthy lifestyles.

Nickelodeon spokesman Dan Martinsen said it had been a leader in helping children and their families be more active and healthy and had pushed advertisers for more balance in their offerings.

Kellogg spokeswoman Jill Saletta said the company was proud of its contributions to healthy diets and would keep educating people about good nutrition and exercise.

A food industry-backed group defended the companies, saying the lawsuit assumes that parents can’t turn off televisions, have no control over the food they buy and can’t make their kids go outside to play.

“Going out on a limb here, perhaps her (Carlson’s) kids want these foods not because of ads, but because they’re children,” said Dan Mindus, spokesman for the Center for Consumer Freedom.