US asks restaurant companies to promote healthier foods to children

By Waylon Cunningham

New York -The U.S. federal government will ask restaurants to self-regulate their marketing to children by promoting healthy meals and limiting advertisements for unhealthy foods, according to the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission’s second report released Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is tasked with investigating what its supporters call an epidemic of childhood disease.

The commission’s cooperative approach to the industry, rather than calling on regulators to enact strict rules, drew criticism from public health experts such as Marion Nestle, a former New York University nutrition professor who has studied food marketing for decades.

Nestle said the food and restaurant industry makes too much money from marketing unhealthy food to children to enforce restrictions on their own. “They’re not going to stop unless they’re forced to,” she said, calling the commission’s recommendations a missed opportunity.

National Restaurant Association president Michelle Korsmo praised the MAHA report as advancing the role of restaurant owners to “balance delicious meals with healthier choices for customers,” and said the organization will seek to offer help in the process.

The Federal Trade Commission, typically the regulator of advertising in the U.S., is specifically restricted in its power to regulate marketing to children following a 1980 law.

The University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health estimates that food, beverage and restaurant companies spend almost $14 billion per year on food advertisements in the U.S. and that fast food remains the most advertised food category to children and adolescents on TV.

Many restaurant and food companies already participate in a voluntary program to limit their advertising to children, and those companies have lobbied the White House and lawmakers in recent months on nutritional issues, including on the MAHA Commission.

(Reporting by Waylon Cunningham; Editing by Anna Driver)