Food Fight!

The Trix rabbit, Count Chocula, The Cute Penguin on the kid cuisine box, and of course Chuck-E- Cheese. Those were my favorite foods as a kid for obvious reasons. They had cool cartoons, usually had prizes, and in the portions that I ate, were not all that good for me. What more would a young kid ask for?

The ad world has been told for years to be careful how they market to children but in the past year, the reigns have been pulled tight. The Better Business Bureau's Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative said it would enforce the same nutritional standards for all 17 of its voluntary members. The standards are becoming to tight that its predicted by Late 2013 one in three products now advertised to kids would be off the air, unless the recipes are drastically changed to have less soduim, saturated fat, and of course the devil  Sugar (seriously I read it in Skinny Bitch, Sugar is the Devil)! 

The new rules are meant to thwart a stronger proposal by the Obama administration that advertisers say would pretty much shut down kid-oriented ads for most foods.

This comes almost a year after a study conducted by the American Psychological Association. “Federal regulators should restrict television advertising aimed at children 8 and younger because research shows youngsters lack the skills to question a commercial's claims as anything but fact, the American Psychological Association said this past September. 

The association said extensive studies found that young children are unable to comprehend televised advertising messages and, as a result, is likely to consider commercials as "truthful, accurate and unbiased. This can lead to unhealthy eating habits as evidenced by today's youth obesity epidemic," the group said in a news release. The association said that advertisers spend more than $12 billion a year on messages aimed at the youth market, including children over 8. The average child -- no matter what age -- watches more than 40,000 television commercials a year, it added.”

Could this be the end of all my favorite food cartoons? I guess only time will tell.

Yes, that is Kiernan Shipka, AKA, Sally Draper, in a Trix Commercial, what a fitting picture for this post!