Kids Need Healthy Food, Not Hyped Junk

Urge Food Giants to Stop Battling US Marketing Guidelines

Breaking News: Several food companies have started blocking EWG supporters' emails from their inboxes. Don't let them get away with it. Now more than ever we need your voices to get their attention. Add your name today and we'll make sure that your petitions are delivered to each and every one of them!

Big food companies and their highly paid advertising agencies are aggressively lobbying the government to kill the federal Interagency Working Group's new children's food marketing guidelines, which aim to promote sales of more healthful foods.

Food companies are calling these voluntary guidelines "irredeemable," "counterproductive," "unnecessary" and "monumentally flawed." They're pushing for their own, weaker set of guidelines instead.

We won't sit quietly though. Environmental Working Group has joined forces with the Center for Science in the Public Interest to ask the chief executive officers of large food manufacturers to stop their attacks on these guidelines. Join us today in demanding that these food companies use their resources to market healthier food to our children, not to lobby the government to protect the unhealthy status quo.

We'll deliver your petition to:

Campbell's Soup	General Mills	Kraft	PepsiCo	Unilever
ConAgra	Hershey's	McDonald's	Post
Dannon	Kellogg's	Nestle	Sara Lee

As a customer and supporter of Environmental Working Group, I'm disappointed that your company, as a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, has been lobbying aggressively to kill the federal Interagency Working Group's proposed voluntary guidelines on food marketing to children. Studies show that food marketing works. And food companies know it - or else they wouldn't spend $2 billion a year on marketing food to children. While the industry's self-regulatory program has spurred some improvements, the vast majority of foods marketed to children are still of poor nutritional quality, according to several studies.

It's shameful that many companies have been misleading members of Congress and their staffs by falsely claiming that the proposed voluntary guidelines amount to a "ban" and "regulations." Truth is, they are purely voluntary. Each company is free to follow them or not.

I urge you to work with the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children - not against it. The IWG marketing guidelines are much needed to improve child nutrition, address childhood obesity and support parents' efforts to feed their children healthy food.