Starting next school year, under U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, local education agencies or school districts must have in place a “local school wellness policy” to create a school environment that promotes students’ health, well-being, and ability to learn. Under the baseline policy, all foods and beverages sold to students must meet USDA nutrition standards, and products that don’t meet those standards can’t be marketed in schools. This is a great start, but leaves a lot of wiggle room for food companies to take advantage of kids.
Corporations are anxious to market in schools—when kids are captive, young, and impressionable—to create brand loyalty for life. Kids in school can’t “change the channel,” and anything advertised in a school comes with the powerful endorsement of the school or faculty. No products should be marketed in these spaces.
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) shares with us some great new tools from ChangeLab Solutions to stop marketers from targeting kids in schools.
The ChangeLab tools include:
- Food and Beverage Marketing in School Wellness Policies, model policy language for limiting unhealthy marketing to students.
- Restricting Food and Beverage Marketing in Schools, a fact sheet that outlines policy options for districts that want to go beyond the minimum requirements and address all in-school food marketing.
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) supports parents’ efforts to raise healthy families by limiting commercial access to children and ending the exploitive practice of child-targeted marketing. In working for the rights of children to grow up—and the freedom for parents to raise them—without being undermined by corporate interests, CCFC promotes a more democratic and sustainable world. Learn more at www.commercialfreechildhood.org.