Food group praises kid food ad standards

WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) -- A food advocacy group is praising nutrition and marketing standards proposed by the U.S. government's Interagency Working Group on food marketed to children.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington called the voluntary standards strong and sensible and urged food and entertainment companies to adopt them.

"A key weakness of the current self-regulatory approach to food marketing to children is that each company has its own strategically tailored standards," Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at CSPI, says in a statement. "While overall the standards look fairly similar, many have loopholes, like weak or no sodium standards for fast-food companies and weak sugar standards for cereal marketers."

The Interagency Working Group is comprised of officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The group developed a set of voluntary standards for marketing food to children under age 17.

In recent years, several food and entertainment companies developed policies on food marketing to children on their own or via the Council of Better Business Bureaus' Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative.

"However, company policies aren't making enough of a difference," Wootan says. "If companies are serious about addressing marketing to children, they'll agree to follow the proposed national marketing standards."