Disney's Healthy Food Marketing Plan a Fantasia?
On the very day that Walt Disney Company announced that it would limit future food marketing deals to brands that provide healthy food products to kids, there was Kellogg's sugar-crazy Tony the Tiger (again) welcoming kids to Disney's website. Is the company, then, not "Greeeaat!" for its plan to limit calories, fat, saturated fat and added sugars to any product the Disney name promotes? Public health attorney and author Michele Simon doesn't think so. She takes both Disney and the press (e.g. Daily Mail to public: "Disney Bans All Junk Food") to task for hyping what she calls a PR-driven move to keep the kids watching Disney--and probably eating the bad stuff anyway. Simon's top criticisms: 1) Disney has created a two-to-four-year phase-in, which means not only that Disney is protecting current profit centers, but that if this voluntary plan changes, consumers may remember only the headlines and forget about the commitments; 2) Disney didn't include a ban on junk food advertising in its wider media conglomerate, such as ABC Network, Disney Channel and Toon Disney; 3) Disney omitted limits on product placement in movies and television; and 4) Disney didn't mention "advergaming"--like the enticement of its current website. "...[C]hildren don't need The Incredibles to tell them when and what to eat," Simon writes.
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