First lady urges food companies to advertise healthy foods to children
September 19, 2013 | 01:34 AM
First Lady Michelle Obama urges food industry executives to produce ads urging children to eat healthy. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)
First Lady Michelle Obama told food industry executives in the White House on Wednesday that they should devote more advertising to healthy foods and cut back on ads for foods deemed not as healthy.
As usual in her “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity, Obama emphasized the positive, noting that she has enjoyed visiting “a Walmart stocked with fresh produce, or having dinner at an Olive Garden with a healthier kids menu, or hanging out with Mickey to celebrate Disney’s achievements on this issue.”
But she also noted that she looks forward to seeing media companies “limiting the use of your licensed characters to market unhealthy food to kids, and limiting unhealthy food ads in your programming.”
Obama said that when she was a working mother living in Chicago she “began to realize that some of these foods that were so quick and cheap and tasty weren’t always healthy for my kids.”
She also said that “the advocates and experts here today have an important responsibility too” to praise food companies when they take risks “even if we think they haven’t gone far enough.”
“We need to help them make those risks pay off, so that they’ll go even farther, and so that other companies will follow their lead.”
Tres Bailey, a Washington lobbyist for Walmart, was one of more than 80 food industry officials and activists who attended a White House convening on food marketing to children Wednesday. At left is Margot Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)
