PHAI Publishes Materials to Support Suits Against Companies Marketing Food to Children

Cara Wilking, a Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) staff attorney, has authored an issue brief intended to provide a legal foundation for consumer protection lawsuits against food companies that advertise “unhealthy food and beverage products” to children in a manner that she describes as “pester power” marketing. She explains that such marketing “targets children who, unable to purchase products for themselves, nag, pester and beleaguer their parents into purchasing unhealthy food products for them.” Wilking’s premise is that “[p]ester power marketing tactics are similar to oppressive and unscrupulous ‘high pressure’ sales tactics,” and that parents, for a number of reasons, are unable to say “no” when their children beg for these products in public.

According to Wilking, two primary legal theories can support private litigant
claims and are also “applicable to actions initiated by state attorneys general
to protect the public interest.” Those theories are (i) “pester power marketing
as unfair ‘indirect’ marketing to parents,” and (ii) “pester power marketing as
unlawful direct marketing to children.” PHAI researchers have studied the
consumer protections laws of every state, and Wilking explains how the two
theories fit into the different protections provided under those laws. A separate
PHAI paper discusses the researchers’ findings from the state-law survey.

Formed in the early 2000s to tackle obesity by taking on “Big Food” and to
continue advocacy and litigation-support efforts against “Big Tobacco,” PHAI
is affiliated with Northeastern University School of Law and headed by law
professor and anti-tobacco advocate Richard Daynard.