Maybe Parents Just Fantasize About Their Children Eating A Healthy Diet

Chubby kids could be the thin end of the wedge for activists eager to clamp down on food marketers. When the Children's Advertising Review Unit announced plans last week to strengthen food companies' self-regulatory regime, critics scoffed at the notion that this step could forestall new laws on the matter. Given the rising incidence of obesity among kids, and increasing attention to the topic, it's easy to see why. (A Google search for " 'childhood obesity' + epidemic" yields some 541,000 hits.) Irrespective of its own bad habits, the food industry is now hostage to the bad habits of youthful eaters, and so is its preference for self-regulation. And self-regulation is precisely what kids themselves do too little of, judging by a Mediamark Research Inc. poll of 6-11-year-olds and their parents. Nor are the parents terribly vigilant in policing their kids' diets.Let's start with parents. Seventy-one percent wholly subscribed to the statement, "I try to limit the amount of candy the child eats." The phrase "try to limit" scarcely suggests draconian enforcement, but nearly three in 10 parents couldn't bring themselves to claim (truthfully or otherwise) that their efforts rise to this level. Then there's breakfast, proverbially the most important meal of the day. Seventy percent of the parents agreed entirely with the statement, "I insist that the child eats breakfast," which means 30 percent (at least) let it slide. Sixty-eight percent said they "always keep fresh fruits or vegetables around for snacking," and 59 percent said they "make sure there are always mostly healthy foods and snacks in the house." None of these numbers are impressive. Moreover, the survey finds parents slackening their efforts as kids get older. On the issue of limiting candy, for instance, 77 percent of parents with kids age 6-7 said they try to do this, vs. 66 percent of parents whose kids are 10-11. Given all these details, it's surprising that as many as 55 percent of the kids agreed with the statement, "My parents teach me about nutrition."Kids, meanwhile, have the appetites you'd expect of their age group. When asked to identify the sort of snacks they'd eaten most often in the past 30 days, a virtuous 29 percent cited fruits and vegetables. But they were far outnumbered by the sum of those who'd opted for cookies (30 percent), ice cream (22 percent) and candy (22 percent). Here again, the trends tend to worsen as the kids grow older. While 33 percent of the 6-7-year-olds said they snack most often on fruits and vegetables, the number dwindled to 26 percent among those age 10-11. Conversely, while 18 percent of the 6-7s said they most often snack on candy, 26 percent of the 10-11s said the same.

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Maybe Parents Just Fantasize About Their Children Eating A Healthy Diet

Mark Dolliver

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Mark Dolliver