US NGO publishes M2K guidelines

On 20 January, the Healthy Eating Research (HER), a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, released its "Recommendations for Responsible Food Marketing to Children", a comprehensive list of definitions of food marketing practices directed to children under the age of 15. A summary of the report with the main points in the form of an infographic was also published.

The recommendations aim to provide guidance on food marketing to children to a broad range of stakeholders, including food and beverage manufacturers, retailers, media and entertainment companies, advertisers, marketers, policymakers, NGOs and researchers. It intends to "close the gap with responsible guidelines for marketing to kids".

While self-regulation has resulted in the first-ever declines in unhealthy food marketing to children, the HER regrets that children are still exposed to a great deal of food marketing for unhealthy foods and beverages. "One key reason that self-regulation is not more effective is that food and entertainment companies define food marketing to children too narrowly", the report states.

The proposed key amendments to the self-regulatory schemes are:

Guidelines should apply to 14 years old, not 11 years old children

The audience threshold for marketing to children should be 25% not 35% or when ads are designed to attract children's attention

Guidelines should apply to both products and brands and not only products

Guidelines should apply to all marketing aimed at children and in places where children live, learn and play

In 2009, the US Congress tasked the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Agriculture, to establish an Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children to develop a set of guidelines for responsible food marketing to children, including clarifying what communications constitute marketing directed to children. However, the Interagency Working Group was dismantled before issuing final recommendations.

HER is part of the "Food Marketing Workgroup", a network of more than 200 organizations and academic experts campaigning against food marketing to children headed by the Center for Sciente in the Public Interest (CSPI).