In 1978, the Federal Trade Commission proposed sweeping regulations to reign in junk food marketing to kids. The food industry quickly mobilized, convincing Congress to block the rule. Nearly fifty years later, the regulatory freeze remains in place, but angst about food advertising has not gone away. In response, the food industry has pushed a simple narrative: companies can best address the harms of food marketing to kids through voluntary action, and indeed, they are already succeeding. The evidence indicates otherwise. 

As researchers pile on to a massive body of evidence demonstrating both the persistence and harms associated with junk food marketing to kids, parents are catching on. According to one recent poll, 64% of Americans support restrictions on advertising ultra-processed foods to children. Last year, in a sign of the shifting political alliances that have seized on popular discontent with national food policy, the Trump Administration’s Make America Healthy Again Commission issued a report lamenting the fact that children’s “constant exposure” to food ads is causing “increased cravings for and consumption of sugary beverages and other unhealthy products.” With one in five kids in the U.S. now on track to become obese before reaching age 12, a tipping point feels imminent.

Yet the food industry maintains that its voluntary efforts have already practically eliminated children’s exposure to junk food marketing. At the heart of this story lies the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI). Food companies launched CFBAI in 2006, shortly after a congressionally directed study concluded that “food and beverage marketing” puts children’s “health at risk.” The report noted that at least 50 other countries regulated television advertising aimed at children and recommended that Congress take similar action, if “voluntary efforts” to shift food marketing practices were “unsuccessful.”

The CFBAI answered that call to action. It committed 13 of the world’s largest food corporations to the mission of “changing the nutritional profile of food and beverage products in child-directed advertising.” As the mission suggests, CFBAI members did not pledge to stop junk food marketing to kids, but rather to curb ads for the junkiest products to the youngest kids.

Underwhelming results ensued. A 2008 FTC report estimated that large food companies were spending $1.6 billion annually on food marketing to children, and criticized the lack of rigor in CFBAI members’ commitments. Consumer advocacy groups like CFA member Center for Science in the Public Interest pointed out that junk foods continued to dominate advertising to kids, allegations corroborated by follow-up reports from the FTC and IOM in 2012  and 2013,  respectively. As CFBAI’s track record lengthened, so too grew the evidence of its incontrovertible failure. 

Yet the food industry maintains that its voluntary efforts have already practically eliminated children’s exposure to junk food marketing. At the heart of this story lies the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI). Food companies launched CFBAI in 2006, shortly after a congressionally directed study concluded that “food and beverage marketing” puts children’s “health at risk.” The report noted that at least 50 other countries regulated television advertising aimed at children and recommended that Congress take similar action, if “voluntary efforts” to shift food marketing practices were “unsuccessful.”

The CFBAI answered that call to action. It committed 13 of the world’s largest food corporations to the mission of “changing the nutritional profile of food and beverage products in child-directed advertising.” As the mission suggests, CFBAI members did not pledge to stop junk food marketing to kids, but rather to curb ads for the junkiest products to the youngest kids.

Underwhelming results ensued. A 2008 FTC report estimated that large food companies were spending $1.6 billion annually on food marketing to children, and criticized the lack of rigor in CFBAI members’ commitments. Consumer advocacy groups like CFA member Center for Science in the Public Interest pointed out that junk foods continued to dominate advertising to kids, allegations corroborated by follow-up reports from the FTC and IOM in 2012  and 2013,  respectively. As CFBAI’s track record lengthened, so too grew the evidence of its incontrovertible failure. 

Yet the industry has continued to defend its right to self-regulate. It convinced congressional appropriators to block the release of a “radical” proposal, spearheaded by Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback in 2009, that sought to articulate voluntary uniform nutrition standards for products advertised to kids. Advertisers feared the standards would displace the CFBAI green light for ads promoting “better for you” cookies, sugary cereals, and fast-food kids’ meals. In blocking the standards report since 2014, congressional appropriators have effectively frozen federal regulatory action on food marketing to kids. 

Thanks to the industry’s lobbying prowess, parents now have to contend with phenomena like Post Cereal’s “SuperAwesome” campaign to peddle Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles cereal to kids via social media influencers. As Post’s “kidtech” supplier SuperAwesome explains, “children are an essential audience for Post. To ensure parents continue to choose PEBBLES™ in the cereal aisle, the brand needed a trusted partner to help them build affinity with kids.” SuperAwesome touts impressive, if somewhat mystifying results for its campaign, such as: “Post campaign fans of PEBBLES™ cereal were 36% more likely to ask their parents to buy PEBBLES™ cereal,” “After kids saw an ad for PEBBLES™ cereal, brand affinity increased by 37%,” and perhaps most inscrutable, “90% of kids who watched a PEBBLES™ cereal ad were driven to take action after seeing the campaign.” All of this is okay because Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles have “only” 12 grams of added sugar per serving, which puts them within compliance of CFBAI’s Uniform Nutrition Criteria, and therefore suitable for marketing to children under 13. 

Permissive nutrition standards are not the only flaw in CFBAI. The initiative’s focus on “children’s TV programming” has become increasingly anachronistic as Saturday morning cartoons (RIP) have given way to iPads. CFBAI officials argue that “[m]uch less food advertising is directed to children on television and online” than just a few years ago, but such claims are only true in the narrowest sense. Granted, for the roughly 44% of U.S. households watching broadcast or cable TV, food advertising on “children’s programming” has declined precipitously. But outside of the occasional visit to Grandma’s, for most kids, the more significant exposure to food advertisers will take place on digital media, where researchers have documented how algorithmically refined message targeting and “engagement” techniques “create emotional brand connections and enable the potential for optimized future marketing campaigns through the collection of data.” 

Unlike television, digital media offer food advertisers plausible deniability. The most lucrative “emotional brand connections” are made early in life, giving food advertisers a powerful incentive to direct ads towards young kids. Since the 1970s, advertisers have sought to avoid a backlash in response to highly visible advertising to young audiences, like the one watching Saturday morning cartoons. But online audiences are less obviously discernible. In the words of a recent review of 111 food industry ad campaign reports: 

[W]hile food brands directly target children with unhealthy food marketing on digital devices, they often target broader audiences, including mixed-age groups like Generation Z, and refine  segments based on psychographic and behavioural data typical of younger age groups, particularly adolescents. This strategy allows food brands to avoid disclosing the specific age of their target audience, making their marketing practices opaque and difficult to regulate. 

In other words, food companies target ads to kids, and pretend they are doing something else. 

Voluntary industry self-regulation will not protect American’s children, nor should anyone expect it to. Corporations exist to maximize shareholder value, not manage public health. When the 120th Congress convenes on January 3, it should finally say no to food lobbyists and work with the FTC to finish what it started back in 1978. For their part, states should reclaim the tens of millions of dollars in corporate income tax revenue that subsidizes food marketing—the vast majority of which promotes ultra-processed, empty calories—and redirect it to programs like healthy school meals that actually help kids beat the odds and develop good eating habits. Food companies may have a right to advertise, but it should not come at taxpayer’s expense, nor at the expense of our children’s health.