CSPI Wants to Take the Fun Out of Childhood

One of my fondest memories of childhood is waking up on Saturday morning with my brothers, and while my parents slept in late, we would make giant bowls of sugary cereal and sit down to watch great Saturday Morning classics like the Superfriends, the Hair Bear Bunch, Land of the Lostand Speed Buggy. We would eat all of the cereal, get worked into a hyperactive tizzy by the cartoons and then fight over the remote control.

Now comes along a nanny outfit of snobbish busybodies that think they can tell the country what to eat, when to eat it and how much they are allowed. And to make it worse, if you are a parent, they think they know better than you do on what to feed your children. And dammit, if they can’t get anyone to take them seriously, they are going to sue companies until they get their way.

From the Reuters News Agency: http://tinyurl.com/9ljus

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A consumer group wants to keep Tony the Tiger from promoting sugary cereals on the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon show, or anywhere else kids are watching.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest on Wednesday announced legal action to try to stop the Kellogg Co., maker of cereals like Frosted Flakes, and Nickelodeon cable network Viacom Inc., from marketing junk food to children.

A planned lawsuit will ask a Massachusetts court to stop the companies from marketing junk foods in venues where 15 percent or more of the audience is under age 8, and to stop marketing junk foods through Web sites, toy giveaways, contests and other techniques aimed at that age group.

The planned lawsuit in Massachusetts is the latest attempt to use the courts to try to battle the growing obesity crisis in the United States.

A widely watched lawsuit filed in 2002 accused fast-food leader McDonald’s Corp. of using misleading advertising to lure children into eating unhealthy foods. McDonald’s has called that lawsuit frivolous and parts of the case have been dismissed.

In the Massachusetts case, plaintiffs contend that the two companies are harming children since the overwhelming majority of food products they market to children are high in items such as sugar and fat or nearly devoid of nutrients.

“We have not been served with any legal papers,” Nickelodeon said. “That said, Nickelodeon has been an acknowledged leader and positive force in educating and encouraging kids to live healthier lifestyles, as well as in the ongoing process of encouraging advertisers to provide more balance in their offerings, and we will continue to do so.”

Nickelodeon has also licensed its characters for “good-for-you” products, such as a deal that has SpongeBob characters on packages of Grimmway carrots.

Kellogg could not be immediately reached for comment.

Of 168 ads for food that appeared on Nickelodeon during a review in the fall, 88 were for foods with poor nutritional quality, the center said. Nickelodeon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants were also used on packages of “junk foods” like Kellogg’s Wild Bubble Berry Pop-Tarts, the center said.

Meanwhile, the center also reviewed 27.5 hours of Saturday morning programming and found 98 percent of the commercials promoted what it called “nutritionally poor foods.”

“As a parent, I do my best to get my kids to eat healthy foods,” Sherri Carlson, a plaintiff and mother of three, said in the center’s news release. “But then they turn on Nickelodeon and see all those enticing junk-food ads.”

But I guess Sherri Carlson cannot control the actual food brought into the house, and must think it is cruel to tell her darling brats “no” when they ask for something sweet. What a shrew this woman must be. Rather than being a parent to her own children and minding her own business, she has to sue two great companies, claiming they are colluding to make her brats fat.

In addition to trying to ruin the childhoods of millions of American Children, the group also uses junk science to say that lots of popular foods and additives are bad for you. Granted, Olestra makes you poo, but its not toxic. I don’t like it, so I don’t eat it. The marketplace should decide whether or not foods remain on the shelves for sale, not some nanny group. But they also say aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, is bad for you,which is a lie. For a comprehensive listing of CSPI’s lies, see http://www.cspiscam.com