How Scooby Doo makes kids fat

RESEARCHERS AT YALE have found that cartoon characters on food packaging makes kids think the food inside tastes better.

Well, duh. Even though there are only a few independent studies about the power advertising has over children (industry research is proprietary), why else would the labeling of foods with toys, TV characters and celebrities have grown so much? Why else would the food industry spend $1.6 billion each year on marketing to kids, according to the Federal Trade Commission? And how can we ever reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity without putting this issue on the table?

In the Yale study, published in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics, when children were given a choice of graham crackers, gummy fruits or carrots, they said that the food with Scooby-Doo, Dora or Shrek on their packages tasted better than the exact same foods in plain packaging. The recent study tracks one conducted by the Sesame Street Workshop in which preschoolers were given the choice between a Hershey bar or broccoli. Not surprisingly, they chose the candy - but when a picture of Elmo was slapped on the vegetable, 50 percent of the kids went for it.

TV characters are only a fraction of the ways the food industry targets kids: another recent study, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, looked at Web sites recommended to kids in commercials on the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. The sites featured Internet games built around candy or sugared cereal (nicknamed "advergames.") Playing the games over and over meant kids spend much longer absorbing the sales message.

And then there are the toys in McDonald's Happy Meals - right now, Shrek-themed watches. Last week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest warned that it intends to sue McDonald's because the toys, it said, "have the effect of conscripting America's children into an unpaid drone army of word-of-mouth marketers."

That's a bit much, but the nation's campaign to help parents combat obesity in their children is doomed to fail if Shrek and Scooby Doo are fighting for the other side.

The "action plan" for the Task Force on Childhood Obesity championed by first lady Michelle Obama was released last month and includes an extensive discussion of marketing junk food to children. It recommends that both the industry and media companies that license TV and movie characters adopt strong self-regulation policies. Haven't we seen this show before?

Just four years ago, when food companies started feeling the heat and promised to self-regulate, they started an initiative with lofty goals: make child-directed advertising promote "healthier dietary choices" or "better-for-you" products. Of course, they couldn't agree on just what that meant. Last year, a study found little improvement. In fact, the 16 companies in the initiative nearly doubled the use of licensed characters.

In Britain, licensed characters can't be used to sell unhealthy food, but the United States is a long way from that kind of action. Still, voluntary action can make a difference without hurting a company's bottom line. The Walt Disney Co. already has decided that its characters won't shill for kid-focused foods unless they meet guidelines for low calories and fats - and Disney's doing all right. Even with that exception, we have as much faith in self-regulation by the food industry as we have in self-regulation by Wall Street, oil companies or coal-mine operators.

Food and media companies need to know that government regulators won't allow them to play games on this issue indefinitely. *