Printer-friendly format Fun food - a recipe for disaster Reprinted from Pure Facts, April 2002

The problem is increasing at an astonishing rate:

• Today nearly 5 ½ million American children are obese. They are at high risk for serious illness and early death.

• In a report to Congress the Agriculture Department criticized schools that teach nutrition while selling soft drinks and junk food snacks.

• The food industry spends more than $10 billion a year on advertising and Americans now consume an average of 44 gallons of sodas a year. One gas station has even installed vending machines on every pump island so the customer no longer needs to walk to the cashier to get his soda.

  Since when did hypertension, diabetes, stroke, arthritis and cancer become "fun?"

• Children who are raised on fast food, which is also served in their school cafeteria, can have their sugar + fat meal "super sized" for even more of a wallop. Meanwhile, major companies are taking young taste buds ever farther away from food, calling it "fun."

        "Getting the kids to eat"

Our children need genuine food, not more fluorescent colored junk. In the pursuit of profits, some food companies have ignored their obligation to the consumers they serve.

At a time when childhood obesity is a major health problem in this country, food companies claim they are providing a service by getting kids to eat. When a food is promoted as "fun" it often means it has very little nutritional value.

A manager at Parkay, which makes pink and blue margarine designed to appeal to children, claims that "parents told us they want fun condiments to bring kids to the table."

HJ Heinz Co. gave us EZ Squirt ketchup in "three new colors that kids can mix and match to triple their fun at family meals," according to a company spokesman. "EZ Squirt gives kids the opportunity to be artists at the table, expressing their creativity by drawing with bright colors."

When Heinz introduced green and purple ketchup, their sales increased and their share of the ketchup market went from 50 to 56% -- a big deal in the ketchup business.

Will consumers be willing to pay for "mystery products?"

Heinz hoped to further enhance sales with EZ Squirt Mystery Color in pink, orange and teal. The gimmick here is that the bottle contains one of three color choices: Passion Pink, Awesome Orange, or Totally Teal. The consumer will not know which color he has bought until he takes the product home and opens it up. (According to press releases, "the mystery bottle is white and wrapped in a special rainbow label that helps hide what's inside, keeping ketchup lovers and little detectives in suspense until the very first squeeze.) In other words, you pay the retail price of as much as $1.99, bring the 19 oz. bottle home and if the color is not the one your child favors, you get to go back to the store and continue to pay for more mystery bottles in hopes that one of them will suit junior's food fashion preference. Apparently the company expects that enough parents will continue to pay for an unmarked product until they find the color they seek. To ensure that there will be a demand and attract widespread media attention, the company is manufacturing a limited number of bottles. (Does this sound like the days of the Cabbage Patch dolls and Transformer Robots? )

"Simply put, it's not what a potato
is supposed to be."

These "pint-sized Picassos," as the company refers to them, can do their art work on the new artificially colored frozen French fries offered by Ore-Ida, one of the companies owned by Heinz. Their "Funky Fries" come in Kool Blue, Cinna Stix and Cocoa Crispers. According to the company, "Ore-Ida puts fun into funky with the introduction of Funky Fries." "Simply put, they're not what a potato is supposed to be."

Food writer Catherine Sleep agrees that this isn't what a potato is supposed to be. She comments, "It's not the job of manufacturers to teach our children to eat well. That's the job of parents. But do they have to make it so hard? How about a little more investment in making genuinely healthful food appeal to kids? Now that would really be something to be proud of."

The amount of money spent on marketing to children is now more than $12 billion and rising, according to Susan Linn of Harvard University's Media Center for Children. She calls the use of dyes in food "just part of the intensive marketing artillery that is brought to bear on children every microsecond of every day."

"Corporations see gold in our kids' heads. Buy, buy buy" says Gary Ruskin, who heads Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization that monitors the effects of advertising on children.

Curiously, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association defended the increased use of dyes in food for children. Althea Zanecosky, who gives her daughter Milk Changer Oreos (when you dunk the cookie, it dyes the milk) believes, "You have to do whatever you can to encourage kids to eat a variety of foods. If you can find a nutritious food that has been colored to make it more attractive, I think that's OK."