National Post

Jeannie Marshall: The pervasiveness of junk food advertising to children
In an excerpt from Outside The Box, Jeannie Marshall describes her efforts to shield her son from the lure of ‘packaged cakes, chocolate bars, cookies, yogurt-like products and ice cream’:

We have to be on guard to protect our children against so many potentially destructive intrusions into their lives, yet food marketing that goes directly to children often slips in at their level, where we don’t even see it. Even when we do see it, it’s astonishing how little we can do about it. If a well-dressed man in the park persistently offered sweets to your child, ignoring your requests for him to stop, I’m sure you would scoop up your child and leave the park. I’m fairly certain everyone in the park would run the man out. Yet there are men and women offering candy and food products to our children all day long. We let them into our houses through the television, radio, Internet and DVDs we let our children watch instead of commercial TV. They beckon our children to follow them, they offer them sweet and savoury delights and they promise never to say no the way that grouchy old parents do. (Illustration by Andrew Barr)