Do you remember the “Think B4 U post!” campaign launched this year to help children use the Internet safely? (Read about it here if you don’t.) We think that it will soon be necessary to launch another one, not in virtual but in offline reality: “Think B4 U buy!”
According to a study conducted by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity (Yale University), from 2006 to 2008 “the number of products with youth-oriented cross-promotions increased by 78%,” and “only 18% of products met accepted nutrition standards for foods sold to youth,” as Public Health Nutrition informs us in its March 2010 issue.
Do you remember the last time you checked the nutrition facts on food with attractive and child-oriented packages? Be sure to do this next time you shop, because not all that glitters is gold. “Yale Study Finds More Licensed Characters and Other Packaging Promotions Used to Market Less Nutritious Foods to Kids,” according to ArticleAnt.com.
Don’t allow promoters and advertisers to pull one over on you! Driving Kids, an online game for the smart kids of smart parents, hopes that you act smart. The next time you see attractive snack packaging with a character your children adore, don’t hurry to put it into your shopping cart: be sure to find out what’s really inside the packaging first!
