OAK BROOK Ill. McDonald’s Corp. plans to change the way it advertises Happy Meals to children aged 12 and younger as part of an initiative by 11 major food marketers to head off potential government regulation of their marketing practices.
McDonald’s and the other companies, among them General Mills, PepsiCo Inc., Mars Inc. and Kraft, announced their “pledges” not to advertise food to children that do not meet certain nutritional guidelines earlier this week. The initiative was showcased at a forum Wednesday hosted by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services.
McDonald’s pledged that “all advertising primarily directed to children under 12 will be for meals that meet specific calorie, fat, saturated fat and sugar limitations consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 and other government standards.”
McDonald’s also said its advertising would feature the 375-calorie Happy Meal that includes four chicken McNuggets made with white meat, apple slices, low-fat caramel dip ad 1-percent low-fat white milk.
The changes in McDonald’s advertising to children are expected to begin in January 2008.
All of the pledges were approved under the Council of Better Business Bureau’s Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which was formed last November.
“These companies have pledged to focus essentially all of their advertising primarily directed to children under 12 on products meeting better-for-you standards or refrain from advertising to that age group,” said Steven J. Cole, president and chief executive of the Council of Better Business Bureaus.
Astatement by Margo G. Wootan, nutrition policy director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, called the pledges a “positive and historic development,” but noted that the absence of some companies from the initiative, including Burger King and Chuck E. Cheese’s, “points to the need for much stricter scrutiny of junk food marketing aimed at kids on the part of the Federal Trade Commission and Congress.”
Both the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission are investigating the way marketers target kids in light of a growing childhood-obesity problem.