Junk Food and Marketing to Kids in School
Many parents try help our children develop healthy eating habits and in an ideal world our public schools would assist in that effort. And they do take some steps in that direction. But while nutrition lessons and many cafeteria offerings promote healthier eating, more and more schools are turning to vending machines and other commercial endeavors to try to fill their budget gaps. This article from last week’s LA Times points out that the “most popular vending machine items included soft drinks, candy, chips, crackers, cookies, cakes and ice cream.” For more information, see this recent peer-reviewed study.
This is the topic of a panel discussion our policy center will be hosting on Friday, September 24th at CU Boulder. If you’re interested in attending, please visit here to learn more and rsvp.
The panel is titled “Schoolhouse commercialism, marketing, and junk food: Exploring policy and law,” and the two panelists are Professor William Koski of Stanford Law School and Professor Alex Molnar of the Arizona State University School of Education. Molnar and Koski wrote a legislative-policy brief for EPIC earlier this year, called, “Policy and Statutory Responses to Advertising and Marketing in Schools,” which discusses junk food marketing as well as marketing that makes its way into the curriculum. Here’s a quote from their executive summary:
While corporate-school arrangements do often provide fundraising opportunities or entertaining activities, their benefits tend to be modest compared with their damage. Students are harmed, for example, when time is diverted from academic pursuits. They are also harmed when “learning” activities teach children to be uncritical and loyal consumers of particular branded products, or teach them, without reflection, to adopt points of view favorable to corporate sponsors. Overall, marketing activities in schools actively threaten high-quality education by causing psychological, health-related, and academic harm to students. Commercial activities offer children experiences primarily intended to serve the sponsors and not the children themselves; they are therefore inherently “mis-educative,” because they promote unreflective consumption rather than critical thinking and rational decision making.
Molnar and Koski have thought a great deal about these issues. Their presentations will be short and will raise some new ideas but leave lots of time for discussion.