Childhood obesity is becoming a national priority as First Lady Michelle Obama takes a stronger stand against large corporations. This time she has the support of several Cabinet officials, adding more muscle to the initiative towards improving the health of the nation’s children. Obesity has become a serious and life-threatening condition for many of Americans, and it’s in part due to the types of food available in rural or impoverished areas and the school systems.
But there’s also the marketing. Michelle Obama has been pushing large companies to take more responsibility in their advertising, especially when it comes to the children. Aligning the principles between providing healthier food options and marketing them properly is one of the primary goals of Obama’s Let’s Move campaign. With more special interest groups and government officials adding their support to the First Lady, a Task Force has been created to actually affect change.
This time, Michelle Obama isn’t playing around. The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has come up with a 124-page report, full of recommendations for businesses, school systems and even subsidized housing initiatives towards decreasing the issue at hand. Should the recommendations not be taken seriously, Michelle Obama has warned that the government can and will step in. “No one gets off the hook on this one,” Obama said in a presentation this week, reports The Washington Post.
So what does this mean for food manufacturers and restaurants that push value meals, obscene portions and misleading marketing regarding their nutritional value? A higher standard that will eventually gain legal grounds. When it comes to advertising, companies have done everything they can legally get away with in order to draw in customers.
Many legal initiatives are already under way, including a California county that’s looking to ban toys in fast food Happy Meals to decrease the amount of “marketing perks” that could sway a child towards making unhealthy meal decisions. Though this is more of a responsive action to the larger problem at hand, it is evidence of the country’s frustration with advertisements’ affect on children.
While the responsibility of maintaining one’s health is primarily up to that individual or their caretakers (parents), there’s a lot that needs to be done towards educating those individuals so that they can see through the marketing. Better yet, get the companies to take more responsibility in their part towards that education process. After all, that’s really what marketing is all about–educating the consumer.
In all, I think it’s great that Michelle Obama is taking a stand against the larger companies that tweak box labels and colors in order to make their products appear healthier than they are. No one thought the tobacco industry could be toppled, and even fewer people believed that the same type of corporate responsibility could be applied to food and beverage marketing, but the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity is looking to change all of that.
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