Two new journal articles written by ChangeLab Solutions staff make the case that government can regulate junk food ads targeting children, despite industry’s claims to the contrary.

Food and beverage companies spend nearly $2 billion per year marketing to children and adolescents, and many experts blame aggressive youth-targeted junk food advertising for fueling the childhood obesity epidemic. Meanwhile, the food and media industries have invoked the First Amendment to thwart government action to protect our nation’s youth, claiming that all food and beverage advertising to children is protected speech.

Not so, argues ChangeLab Solutions legal research director Samantha Graff and colleagues, in articles published this month in two major public health and policy journals.

• “Government Can Regulate Food Advertising to Children Because Cognitive Research Shows It Is Inherently Misleading” Health Affairs, February 2012. The First Amendment does not protect “inherently misleading” commercial speech, and the authors argue that advertising to children younger than 12 is inherently misleading: research shows that young children do not have the capacity to recognize the persuasive intent of advertising or to fully comprehend commercial messages.
• "Protecting Young People from Junk Food Advertising: Implications of Psychological Research for First Amendment Law” American Journal of Public Health, February 2012. The authors show how four premises of First Amendment protection of advertising – (1) advertising conveys concrete information, (2) people use it to make rational decisions, (3) it is possible to distinguish between actually and potentially misleading ads, and (4) potentially misleading ads can be cured by disclosure – don’t translate in the context of food advertising to children and teens.