Smart Cookies: Raising Healthy Kids

5 ways to protect kids from junk food marketeering

By Amy Crelly
Tips courtesy of the Center for Science in the Public Interest

While legislators debate the soda tax in Sacramento, it’s parents who have the tough job of helping kids navigate through our fast-food, high-fructose world. (If only broccoli came with a free Disney Princess toy and water tasted like liquid candy.) Unfortunately, parents’ health-conscious efforts are often at odds with multi-billion-dollar marketing campaigns aimed straight at young consumers. Here are five ways to defend your family:

1. Limit screen time
TV commercials and Internet ads market low-nutrition foods to children. Limit kids’ exposure to these messages by limiting their screen time. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends two hours a day—max.

2. Talk with your kids about food marketing
Help children understand that marketing is aimed at selling them something. Discuss the ways that ads persuade them to want a food, such as using their favorite TV show characters, or toy giveaways.

3. Shop strategically
Establish clear shopping rules that work for your family and stick to them. For instance, limit them to one treat item per shopping trip. (If a child knows what is expected and agrees to it beforehand, she is less likely to be upset in the store when you say “no.”) Also, involve them in picking out which fruits and vegetables, or which shape of whole wheat pasta, you’ll buy.

4. Make healthy snacks more fun
Try lots of different fruits and veggies, prepared lots of different ways, to find out what your kids like best. Add a crazy straw to their water, serve veggies and hummus on a favorite character plate, or add your own prize to a box of healthy cereal.

5. Implement a one-treat-a-day rule
Let kids choose which treat they would like and at which meal or snack time they’d like to eat it. Remind your child—if he has a sugary cereal for breakfast, he is giving up the chance to have a cookie at lunch or ice cream after dinner.

You can find more tips, information and resources for parents at CSPInet.org/nutritionpolicy.