A new front opened in the battle against obesity yesterday after media group Viacom and cereal maker Kellogg were sued by parents and a consumer group seeking to stop the promotion of sugary cereals on children's television.
The suit pitted consumer activists who claim there is a direct link between television advertising and increasing juvenile obesity rates, against food industry groups that claim there is no evidence of such a link.
It will also stir debate over how far parents are responsible for what their children eat, and to what degree such choices are influenced by advertisements viewed regularly by their children.
The Center for Science in the Pubic Interest (CPSI), a Washington-based non-profit nutrition lobby group, said it had joined the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and two Massachusetts parents in the suit. They want the companies to cease marketing junk foods to audiences where 15 per cent or more of the audience is under the age of eight, and to cease marketing them through websites, toy giveaways and competitions.
Kellogg advertises Apple Jack and other cereals on Saturday morning TV shows on the Nickelodeon kids channel, owned by Viacom.
The CSPI found that of 54 Kellogg advertisements it monitored last autumn, 98 per cent were for "nutritionally poor foods". It defines this, and other criteria, as products that contain more than 35 per cent of "added sugars" by weight.
