McDonald’s Corp. has reportedly announced plans to scrap “forward-to-a-friend” features on some of its online games after drawing complaints from a consumer group concerned about children’s privacy. According to media sources, the global restaurant chain said it will disable a sharing option on HappyMeal.com that allowed users “to e-mail ecards, links and photos to family and friends.” “Rest assured, the online security of our guests—especially our youngest guests—remains a top priority for us,” a company spokesperson told reporters. “We continuously review and enhance our sites as appropriate and we recently made some updates to HappyMeal.com, including removing the forward-to-a-friend option.” Earlier this year, the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) filed five complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against companies such as McDonald’s and General Mills, Inc. over the use of interactive media to allegedly promote foods and TV programs to children. CDD claimed that these so-called “viral marketing” techniques…
Tag Archives children
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has published its first report on organic foods, concluding that it’s more important for children to eat a wide variety of healthy produce than to emphasize an organic diet. Joel Forman, et al., “Organic Foods: Health and Environmental Advantages and Disadvantages,” Pediatrics, October 2012. According to AAP, research has “convincingly demonstrated” that organic diets can reduce consumer exposure to pesticides and drug-resistant diseases. “However, no well-powered human studies have directly demonstrated health benefits or disease protection as a result of consuming an organic diet,” states the report, which urges pediatricians to discuss the weight of scientific evidence when approached by families interested in consuming organic foods. “What’s most important is that children eat a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat or fat-free dairy products, whether those are conventional or organic foods. This type of diet has proven health benefits,” one of…
Researchers with the New South Wales Cancer Council and University of Adelaide have assessed food and beverage TV advertisements broadcast in five major Australian cities during children’s programming from September 1 to October 31, 2010, and found a total of 951 breaches of both mandatory and voluntary regulations. Michele Roberts, et al., “Compliance with children’s television food advertising regulations in Australia,” BMC Public Health, October 5, 2012. According to the study, “[a]lmost 83% of all food and beverages advertised during children’s programming times were for foods classified as ‘Extras’ in the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. There were also breaches in relation to the amount of advertising repetition and the use of promotional appeals such as premium offers, competitions, and endorsements by popular children’s characters.” The researchers conclude that the country’s current regulatory system “is not providing comprehensive protection for children from exposure to television advertising for unhealthy foods.” They…
Researchers with the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Kansas Medical Center have published a study claiming that children’s brain scans registered increased activation in the orbitofrontal precortex and inferior prefrontal cortex when the subjects were shown familiar food logos. Amanda Bruce, et al., “Branding and a child’s brain: an fMRI study of neural responses to logos,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, September 2012. The study’s authors apparently used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with 17 healthy-weight children to gauge their neural reactions to 60 food and 60 non-food logos as opposed to a baseline image created to approximate the logos’ visual properties of color composition and brightness. “Food logos compared to baseline were associated with increased activation in orbitofrontal cortex and inferior prefrontal cortex,” concluded the report. “Compared to nonfood logos, food logos elicited increased activation in the posterior cingulate cortex. Results confirmed that food logos activate…
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has published a series of studies and commentary on the purported health effects of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages. The American Beverage Association issued a statement contending that studies focusing “solely on sugar-sweetened beverages” as an alleged cause of obesity “or any single source of calories, do nothing meaningful to help address this serious issue. The fact remains: sugar-sweetened beverages are not driving obesity. By every measure, sugar-sweetened beverages play a small and declining role in the American diet.” The studies included Janne de Ruyter, et al., “A Trial of Sugar-free or Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Body Weight in Children,” (concluding, “[m]asked replacement of sugar-containing beverages with noncaloric beverages reduced weight gain and fat accumulation in normal-weight children.”); Cara Ebbeling, et al., “A Randomized Trial of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Adolescent Body Weight,” (concluding, “[a]mong overweight and obese adolescents, the increase in [body mass index] was smaller…
The International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO) has released a report criticizing the food and beverage industry’s efforts to reduce marketing to children in the European Union. Part of the StanMark Project, which receives EU funding, A Junk-Free Childhood 2012 focuses on the EU Pledge signed by 20 companies that agreed to stop marketing products to children younger than age 12 and to submit to independent monitoring. Citing data from the 2011 EU Pledge Monitoring Report, IASO notes a “disappointing” 29 percent decline in the number of advertisements for “non-compliant” products that were viewed by children between January and March 2011 as compared to those viewed between January and March 2005. “While for some countries there were significant decreases in advertising (e.g. in Poland, Ireland and France), in other countries significant increases were recorded, including Slovenia (up 26%) and the Netherlands (up 38%),” states the report. “The problem…
New York State Senator Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx) has introduced a bill (S7849-2011) that would require fast-food restaurants offering incentive items, such as toys, with children’s meals to meet certain nutritional guidelines. The standards, designed to limit the amount of fat, sugar, calories, and sodium per meal, would be established by the state health commissioner. “Incentive items” under the proposal, which has been committed to the Committee on Rules, would also include games, trading cards, admission tickets, “or other consumer product, whether physical or digital, with particular appeal to children.” Such items would also include “any coupon, voucher, ticket, token, code or password which is provided directly by the restaurant and is redeemable for or grants digital or other access to any toy, game, trading card, admission ticket, or other consumer product” appealing to children. The measure defines restaurant to include coffee shops, cafeterias, luncheonettes, sandwich stands, diners, short-order cafes, fast-food…
A recent study has purportedly identified an association between urinary bisphenol A (BPA) concentration and obesity in children and adolescents. Leonardo Trasande, et al., “Association Between Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration and Obesity Prevalence in Children and Adolescents,” Journal of the American Medical Association, September 2012. Relying on data from 2,838 participants ages 6-19 years who were enrolled in the 2003-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, researchers evidently found that urinary BPA concentration “was significantly associated with obesity.” In particular, the study reported that urinary BPA values in the second, third and fourth quartiles showed “a substantial elevation in the odds of obesity” when compared with first-quartile values, with “an adjusted prevalence of obesity of 22.3%... among children in the highest quartile, compared with a 10.3% prevalence…among those in the lowest quartile.” “To our knowledge, this is the first report of an association of an environmental chemical exposure with childhood obesity in…
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers recently published a study finding that sodium intake among U.S. children and adolescents “is positively associated” with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and risk for pre-high blood pressure and high blood pressure (pre-HBP/HBP). Quanhe Yang, et al., “Sodium Intake and Blood Pressure Among US Children and Adolescents,” Pediatrics, October 2012. According to the study, which used 24-hour dietary recalls to estimate the sodium intake of 6,235 children ages 8-18 years, the subjects consumed an average of 3,387 milligrams of sodium daily. The results also apparently indicated that the associations between sodium intake and increased SBP and risk for pre-HBP/HBP “may be stronger” among the 37 percent of participants who were overweight or obese than among those who were not. While in normal-weight children every 1,000 mg extra of sodium evidently corresponded with a one-point rise in SBP, in obese or overweight children…
“U.S. food companies are reaching children by embedding their products in simple and enticing games for touch-screen phones and tablets,” writes The Wall Street Journal’s Anton Troianovski in this September 18, 2012, article examining how food and beverage manufacturers allegedly use mobile games and phone apps to sidestep “government and public pressure to limit advertising to minors on TV and the Web.” According to Troianovski, some of these companies have argued that food-branded apps are a cost-effective marketing tool that would not violate any advertising restrictions because parents much purchase the games first. “We don’t view it as our place to be a superparent—the nanny of the parents or the children to say what products that can see and what games they can play,” Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative Director Elaine Kolish told the Journal. Troianovski notes, however, that the proliferation of such apps has raised questions among consumer…
