American food corporations expressed the will to keep their fatty products away from 6-12 y.o. children's subconscious. McDonald's, Campbell Soup, Pepsico, General Mills, Cadbury Adams, Coca-Cola, Hershey, Kellog, Kraft, Mars and Unilever have all agreed to stop advertising some products that reach a given percentage of fat to children in their latency period.
However, as wrote Brooke Barnes in the NYT, while General Mills will no longer be advertising Trix to the 12-and-under crowd, it will continue to peddle Cocoa Puffs, which have one less gram of sugar per serving. And it will be able to continue advertising Trix on television shows and other media that are considered to cater to “families” rather than just children.
So obviously (and once again), what seems to be an act of good intention is nothing but a way to pretend that they care. Moreover, these corporations are looking for ways out as a government study on childhood obesity is forthcoming.
This new step leads fat companies to tweak their product to make them meet a healthy criteria, healthy enough for TV ad. However, if anyone read Marion Nestle's Food Politics, then one will know that food regulations are bullcrap set by food industry leaders themselves.
The companies have also agreed for the first time to open their marketing plans to the Council of Better Business Bureaus and its Children’s Advertising Review Unit, which will review them and report publicly on the findings.
For food companies to open their marketing plan is a big and unusual step. It's even a little self-destructive, considering that a company's marketing datas represent the core of its intelligence. So why do big corporations trust the Council of Better Business Bureaus?
For starters, the chairman of the CBBB is Thomas J. Ryan, the senior VP of Quaker Foods. Prior to this, he was the VP of Oscar Mayor, Tropicana and Pillsbury Company.
Quaker Foods is a unit of PepsiCo, one of the company part of the above advertising agreement. Here's a convenient situation for PepsiCo, along with the other corporations, which all share the same interests: Mr. Ryan will obviously loosen up its judgement when it will come to studying the PepsiCo marketing and advertising plan. Prepare to find this guy head of the USDA pretty soon.
Now let's get to the fun part: Who else is a CBBB national director who will objectively examine the food companies' marketing and advertising plan?
1. Susan Angele: VP, Deputy General Counsel and CGO, The Hershey Company
2. Angela Birch Cox: Group Counsel, Technical Supply Chain, Coca-Cola Company
3. Paul J. Petruccelli: Senior Director, Public Policy, Kraft Foods, Inc.
4. Claire Regan: Senior Director, Health and Wellness and North America Communications, Kraft Foods, Inc.
5. Robert H. Sanders, Esq.: VP & Deputy General Counsel, Nestle USA, Inc.
Now who's regulating who?
These guys should know though: you don't wash fat away with more fat. The corporate America scheme behind this fake "we're-regulating-your-kids'-food-intake" is so obvious that it's not funny anymore. These guys look like an incestuous rich family whose members fornicate in between each other to preserve their pure blood.
They look at their own monstruous economic system and think it is beautiful.
Freaks!
