Disney Restricting Junk Food Ads! Supporting Kids Eating Healthily!
With the recent stand to arms, cooperative efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and HBO's program, Weight of a Nation, obesity has become a flashpoint greater than it ever was before. Cultural awareness and nutrition education are being promoted with a vengeance by the anti-obesity establishment in a nationwide community-based outreach campaign.
Disney, in its own effort to align itself with the government's national campaign to diminish childhood obesity has made a symbolic pledge to families and children and has joined the battle. It has mandated a directive to advertisers on its child-focused television channels, radio stations and Websites who now must adhere to a strict new set of nutritional standards. Well, folks, the Honey Smacks (top of a list for highest sugar content in a cereal) cereal ads are O.U.T. They will not be advertised on Saturday-morning cartoons on ABC stations owned by Disney. And current products advertised on the shows, like Capri Sun drinks and Kraft Lunchables meals along with a wide range of candy, sugared cereal and fast food will be pulled as not acceptable advertising material.
The tentacles of this strict mandate have also reached into Disney's resorts. At a Washington news conference with first lady Michelle Obama, Disney clarified that it will nutritionally tweak the fast food offerings at its theme parks. For example, Disney will decrease, by 25 percent, the amount of sodium in the 12 million children’s meals served annually at Disney's theme parks and resorts. As this initiative gains momentum, the company will most likely offer healthier choices and further tweak its menus so families will be able to select nutritious foods, and not chomp down the usual convenient high fat junk foods like pizza, hamburgers, fries and sugary drinks. They also announced they will be promoting exercise and healthy eating with entertaining, kid focused public service announcements.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati