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Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood blasts TV promotion of junk foods to children Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Television programs and movies also market unhealthy food to children through extensive brand licensing, promotions at fast food restaurants, and product placement," wrote Linn. The Kaiser Family Foundation's study analyzed more than 8,000 advertisements using detailed data about the viewing habits of children in three age groups. Researchers found while children of all ages are bombarded with promotions for fast food, junk food and soda, 8- to 12-year-olds see the most food advertisements.

Stop Prediabetes Now: The Ultimate Plan to Lose Weight and Prevent Diabetes Jack Challem See book keywords and concepts

Look up and down. product placement within any particular category, be it cereal or detergent, is often determined by slotting fees, a legal form of supermarket bribes. People tend to buy what's at eye level, and food companies pay supermarkets handsomely (tens of thousands of dollars) to place their products at eye level and in other highly desirable locations. You'll often find less expensive, equivalent, and sometimes better products at knee level. The Different Sections of Supermarkets Most supermarkets have seven to ten major sections. These are the most common ones. Produce department.

Sugar Shock!: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life-- and How YouCan Get Back on Track Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

Even older kids sometimes don't know that product placement is at work. Much to our chagrin, sophisticated marketers "often use older children's desire to fit in with their peers and tendency to rebel against authority figures as selling points for their products," the CCFC observes. "A recent Pepsi ad celebrated teens who had been arrested for downloading music illegally." Previously, health advocates also were horrified by a dubious marketing tactic by soda companies to reach parents of nutrient-needy babies: they licensed their logos to a large manufacturer of baby bottles.

Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About it Sue Palmer See book keywords and concepts

One popular way of selling 'cool' is to set up an extremely cool - and apparendy genuine - weblog, which indulges in subde product placement. News of good blogs circulates around the juvenile chat community at electric speed, so the advertiser's message is downloaded on to endless family computers - effortlessly delivering pester power into your home. Mobile phones and the Internet are also increasingly used as a medium for bullying, so threats and nasty messages can pursue unfortunate children even beyond the safety of their own front door.

And as well as the adverts around the edges of TV programmes, marketeers increasingly reach out to children via the Internet, console games, mobile phones and - through sponsorship and product placement - many other aspects of their daily life. Children today are growing up in what US psychiatrist Susan Linn calls 'a marketing maelstrom'. The average child in the US, UK and Australia sees between 20,000 and 40,000 TV commercials a year.

Add to this the impact of marketing -not just the obvious TV ads, posters and packaging, but the subliminal marketing wherever we go, such as vending-machine displays and product placement in films - and it seems practically impossible to keep children away from unhealthy food for long. Marketing messages In the last few decades, the marketing industry has made increasingly insidious inroads into consumers' minds, affecting the way we think and act. Most people in the developed world now believe that choice -in food as in all other consumer products - is a fundamental right.

Food Fight Kelly Brownell and Katherine Battle Horgen See book keywords and concepts

This practice began many years ago, but is now so common that there are more than 100 product placement agencies and even a professional organization to represent them, the Entertainment Resources Marketing Association (ERMA). ERMA notes: The greatest home run in product placement since E. T. scarfed up a pack of Reese's Pieces came with BMW's launch of its Z3 roadster last fall.

Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back Michele Simon See book keywords and concepts

In a letter to JNEB's editors, Golin noted that Marr was wrong on her facts, citing numerous examples of how Coca-Cola markets to children under age twelve, including product placement on television shows and branded checkers sets. He also questioned the journal's complicity in bolstering Coke's position: In short, to dispel the "myth" that soft drink companies market to young children, Marr merely parrots Coca-Cola's false claims about its own marketing practices.

Other methods include product placement, cross promotions, movie tie-ins, advergaming, and package displays. 5. Look for sneaky qualifiers that might water down the impact. For example, Kraft's policy says it applies to media "primarily viewed" by children ages six to eleven, which is another way of saying that mixed media are still fair game. 6. Don't be fooled by self-aggrandizing words like initiative or commitment or even policy. Companies like to make their press releases sound much more important than they really are. 7. What's the oversight mechanism?

Not to mention the value of scoring an end run around pesky federal rules that make product placement illegal on children's programming, but not on mixed shows. Further, Raines made the following eerie projection: "This is the future way we're going to have to communicate our brand."14 Coke-branded toys Also, according to Coke: "Marketing or advertising for products bearing trademarks owned by the Coca-Cola Company, such as clothing, toys, novelties, and collectibles, are subject to these same guidelines.

Coke exploits this loophole through "product placement," where an item or corporate logo is embedded into programming for a more subliminal marketing effect than with commercials. The best example is American Idol—a top-rated show among children ages two to eleven—where Coca-Cola logos are emblazoned all over the set. According to Nielsen Media Research, during the 2004 season, Coca-Cola was the top overall sponsor of American Idol, with more than a staggering two thousand "branded occurrences.

Children are especially vulnerable, for example, to product placement. Suggestive selling: When the clerk or waiter suggests additional food items; restaurants train personnel in this tactic. As in, "Do you want fries with that?" Third-party experts: When food lobbyists want to hide the biased nature of their scientific conclusions, they often hire third-party experts who have no obvious connection to industry. These experts may testify against nutrition legislation, publish scientific articles, or otherwise represent corporate views without revealing their backing.

Interactive product placement: Planned marketing technology to enable viewers to instantly purchase products used by characters they see in movies and TV programs. Junk science: The generalized term the right wing uses to describe any science that goes against corporate interests. For example, bona fide research that soda is linked to obesity is often dismissed by soda-industry lobbyists as "junk science." Licensing: When owners of certain copyrights sell their rights to other companies. For example, when Disney sells a license to McDonald's to market movie-related toys.

Food Fight Kelly Brownell and Katherine Battle Horgen See book keywords and concepts

These leaders showed how companies paid highly esteemed scientists (presumably to secure their allegiance), obscured scientific information, formed "citizen action" groups that claimed to protect consumer freedom, waged a very expensive public relations campaign against antismoking efforts, devoted great resources to lobby government officials here and abroad, paid for product placement in television and movies, and targeted children with advertising.13 The response from society, after some years of inaction, was to be furious with these companies and fight them in every way possible.

The tobacco companies were early adopters of product placement. In 1980 Rogers & Cowan, a Beverly Hills public relations company representing RJR Tobacco Company, sent this memo to RJR: The Cannonball Run—To be released by 20th Century Fox. Through special arrangements with producer Al Ruddy, we have arranged important visibility for several R.J. Reynolds products in the film. This comedy stars Burt Reynolds, Farrah Fawcett, Roger Moore, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dom DeLuise, Bert Convey, Terry Bradshaw, Bianca Jagger, Mel Tillis, and others.

ERMA notes: The greatest home run in product placement since E. T. scarfed up a pack of Reese's Pieces came with BMW's launch of its Z3 roadster last fall. When the car became James Bond's preferred ride in the 007 flick Goldeneye, the hype and glitter surrounding this placement became an event unto itself generating hundreds of millions of dollars worth of exposure worldwide. The deal won BMW and its marketing partners a Super Reggie as the top promotion of the year.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.