Food Ads Harmful to Children?
GUPTA: Welcome to HOUSECALL. You see these ads primarily on weekend mornings. They're targeting kids, pushing them to eat candy and other junk food. Question is, are they harmful? Some experts say yes. And now a new report says despite years of criticism, these food companies are still primarily marketing junk to our kids.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the number one network for African- American...</s>GUPTA, CNN HOST (voice-over): It's Vicky Rideout's job to keep an eye on advertising that can affect our health, especially children. And she's not happy with what she's seeing.</s>VICKY RIDEOUT, KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION: Kids of all ages in this country are exposed to what I think by anybody's standards would be a large amount of food advertising on television every day. Thousands of ads a year.</s>GUPTA: Rideout is a vice president with the Kaiser Family Foundation. This week the foundation released its largest study ever on TV food advertising for kids. Of the thousands of ads studied, 34 percent were for candy and snacks, 28 percent for cereal, and 10 percent for fast food. Get this -- not one advertised fruits or vegetables.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All laziness is suspended until further notice.</s>GUPTA: And only 15 percent of the ads showed children in some type of physical activity.</s>RIDEOUT: I guess I would say that's a relatively small proportion of the ads that include physical activity now.</s>GUPTA: And the issue isn't even new. In a report by the Institute of Medicine back in 2005, research showed that there was a direct connection between food ads for kids and childhood obesity. The report recommended advertising companies push healthier products and show physical activity in their ads. So far, change has been slow.</s>MIKE MCGINNIS, INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE: : I think companies are clearly getting it. I think they're not sure what to do yet, but there's no question that they're concerned, as they should be, about the public concern over the increase in childhood obesity.</s>GUPTA: Corporations are generally motivated by profit. And fatty snacks tend to be popular. Pepsico, which owns Pepsi, Fritolay and Tropicana is trying to market more healthy, yet tasty items.</s>NANCY GREEN, PEPSICO: All of the products that were advertised were baked that were advertised to children. So it's looking at our healthier products.</s>GUPTA: The Kaiser Family Foundation hopes impress on advertisers that the childhood obesity problem is not going away until real changes are made.</s>GUPTA: And that Institute of Medicine report that we just mentioned also recommends that companies stop using cartoon characters to push products. And this Kaiser Family Foundation report found that 11 percent of ads still use some sort of children's television or movie character. So some improvements still needed there. Coming up, what to do after a breast cancer diagnosis?