A recent study has reportedly concluded that bisphenol A (BPA) exposure is associated with low-grade albuminuria in U.S. children, suggesting they may be at a greater risk for kidney and heart disease as adults. Leonardo Trasande, et al., “Bisphenol A exposure is associated with low-grade urinary albumin excretion in children of the United States,” Kidney International, January 2013. Using data from 710 children enrolled in the 2009-10 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, researchers reported that those “with the highest as compared to the lowest quartile of urinary BPA [uBPA] had a significant 0.91 mg/g higher albumin-to-creatinine ratio, adjusted for urinary BPA concentration.” These results were evidently consistent with previous studies associating BPA exposure with low-grade albuminuria in Chinese adults. “Long-term observational studies will be needed to ascertain whether uBPA-associated changes in low-grade albuminuria potentiate the features of the metabolic syndrome—hypertension, hyperlipidemia, or insulin resistance— and augment the risk of…
Tag Archives children
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently adopted final amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) that aim to “strengthen kids’ privacy protections and give parents greater control over the personal information that websites and online services may collect from children under 13.” Based on the findings of a review initiated in 2010, these amendments (i) “modify the list of ‘personal information’ that cannot be collected without parental notice and consent, clarifying that this category includes geolocation information, photographs, and videos”; (ii) “offer companies a streamlined, voluntary and transparent approval process for new ways of getting parental consent”; (iii) “close a loophole that allowed kid-directed apps and websites to permit third parties to collect personal information from children through plug-ins without parental notice and consent”; (iv) “extend coverage in some of those cases so that the third parties doing the additional collection also have to comply with COPPA”; (v)…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a December 2012 staff report finding that only 20 percent of the 400 children’s mobile applications under review “contained any privacy-related disclosure on the app’s promotion page, on the developer website, or within the app.” Titled “Mobile Apps for Kids: Disclosures Still Not Making the Grade,” the report also warned that even when privacy policies were provided, they were often “long, dense and technical” or lacking in “basic details, such as what specific information about a child would be collected, the reason for collecting such information, or what parties would obtain the information.” According to FTC staff, its testing results evidently revealed that 59 percent of the 400 apps “transmitted some information from a user’s mobile device back to the developer or a third-party,” with 5 percent transmitting the device ID to developers; 56 percent transmitting the device ID to advertising networks, analytics…
Researchers with the University of Missouri-Kansas City and University of Kansas Medical Center have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map brain responses to food logos in obese and healthy-weight children. Amanda Bruce, et al., “Brain Responses to Food Logos in Obese and Health Weight Children,” Journal of Pediatrics, November 2012. According to the study, 10 healthy-weight children and 10 obese children completed “self-report measures of self-control” and then underwent fMRI while viewing 60 food and 60 nonfood logos. The results purportedly indicated that, when viewing food logos, “obese children showed significantly less brain activation than the healthy weight children in regions associated with cognitive control.” Obese children also apparently demonstrated “greater activation in reward regions when shown food logos compared with baseline blurred images,” although the researchers “did not find significantly greater brain activation in the OFC [orbitofrontal cortex] or ventral striatum, which have been identified in previous food…
In the ongoing battle over whether the government should regulate food ads targeting children, the Food Marketing Workgroup (FMW), a coalition of more than 80 health groups and nutritionists, is putting pressure on Nickelodeon and its parent company, Viacom, to adopt nutrition guidelines for foods marketed to children, particularly foods that license Nickelodeon characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer. More than 55 health organizations and 30 prominent nutritionists, physicians and other experts signed a December 3, 2012, letter to Nickelodeon and Viacom urging them to implement stronger nutrition standards for the foods marketed to kids on Viacom’s various channels and that bear images of its characters. The group notes that although Viacom has taken some small steps in the right direction, it lags behind other children’s entertainment companies such as The Walt Disney Co. and ION Television, which have adopted comprehensive policies that apply nutrition standards to all…
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has introduced a bill to deny federal tax deductions to companies marketing “junk food” to children. The Stop Subsidizing Childhood Obesity Act (H.R. 6599) would “amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to protect children’s health by denying any deduction for advertising and marketing directed at children to promote the consumption of food at fast food restaurants or of food of poor nutritional quality.” In a recent press release, Kucinich contends that Congress—with [citizens’] tax dollars—has subsidized the marketing efforts of fast food and junk food companies by as much as $19 billion over the past 10 years. “In 2004 alone, $10 billion was spent on food advertising directed at children. It is effective because a child’s brain is unable to distinguish fact from fiction at a time they are developing life-long taste allegiance. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it. According to The Journal…
New York University Nutrition Professor Marion Nestle recently gave an interview to Childhood Obesity’s features editor, Jamie Devereaux, on healthy food access, the role of packaged foods in diets, and “the topic of peer pressure in eating fast food, sugar-sweetened beverages, and brand-name snacks.” While supporting federal policy to increase fresh fruit and vegetable consumption in low-access areas, Nestle noted barriers to cooking at home such as a lack of proper equipment and a narrow food selection exacerbated by income inequality. But she also blamed industry for allegedly fostering peer pressure among young consumers to choose certain foods and beverages above others. “Food marketers deliberately target children and adolescents for marketing, much of it designed to associate the product to the emotional gains from peer bonding,” Nestle opined. “The purpose of food advertising is to make kids think they are supposed to be eating kids’ food—food made just for them—and that they know…
According to a November 5, 2012, New York Times article, technology and media companies have joined trade groups and marketing associations in opposing the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) efforts to update provisions implemented under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). As regulators look to expand the types of data-collection activities covered by COPPA, companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter have reportedly pushed back against these proposals as unduly onerous and likely to stifle all web-based services created for children. Industry analysts have purportedly noted that once FTC requires parental consent for companies to use customer code numbers to track children, the agency “might someday require… similar consent for a practice that represents the backbone of digital marketing and advertising—using such code numbers to track the online activities of adults.” Furthermore, social media platforms have apparently taken issue with a plan to hold third parties liable “if they know…
The Obesity Policy Coalition (OPC) has sent a report to Australian officials on the country’s current self-regulatory system for food marketing, which OPC has described as “seriously flawed.” According to the coalition, the codes developed by the food industry to govern marketing to children “are extremely complex,” resulting in “a litany of loopholes” that companies have allegedly exploited “to promote their products despite childhood obesity sitting at record levels.” In particular, the report claims that self-regulatory codes (i) do not apply to all food advertisers or all age-groups of children, (ii) “only cover advertising that is ‘directed primarily to children,’” (iii) fail to cover many forms of promotion and media, and (iv) rely on “unclear” criteria for determining what is healthy or unhealthy. It also finds the administration and enforcement of these codes “grossly inadequate” since “the scheme relies entirely on complaints from the public.” Faulting the Advertising Standards Board…
“If even the ad industry can’t agree on the definition of an online ad, who can?,” asks The Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang in this November 2 article highlighting the “increasingly thorny debate on how to monitor advertising aimed at children when they are confronted with so many new forms of marketing online.” Kang reports that both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission regulate traditional media but have thus far failed to restrict online advertising to kids, leading consumer groups to question the supposedly “lax oversight of digital marketing.” “There is a great deal of research that shows children don’t distinguish between content and advertising,” American University Communications Professor Kathryn Montgomery was quoted as saying. “Now on digital, there is the opportunity of more blurring of those lines, and the industry is pushing to keep definitions of online advertising broad and unclear.” In particular, Kang notes that even…
