Countering the Commercials
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union COUNTERING THE COMMERCIALS BY RICHARD J. MARGOL1S There was a young man from Moline who was paid to drink pop on the screen; but the chemicals soon began to balloon, and he...
...It wasn't just the empty calories that worried Choate, but the sugar, chemicals and various additives as well...
...I'd hate to think what General Foods would do if we got out of line," the research director told me...
...Choate is now chairman of an organization he helped to create?the Council on Children, Media and Merchandising—one of whose aims is to rescue youngsters from the brain-bondage of television advertising...
...How harmful were they...
...They went on to quote the results of a three-year study conducted by the Journal of American Nutrition Education: "Nutrient inadequacies . . . reach into all income groups and all regions...
...I'd much rather ski," he said with some glee, "than watch those commercials they show...
...What was the FDA doing about them...
...Sealed in concrete" was an FDA official's response to our request that the files be opened...
...In 1970, however, an agency official announced that "the gras list is up for grabs...
...That, of course, was precisely the view of the food industry the FDA was allegedly regulating...
...Eat junk!' " Choate hopes to counterattack through "compensatory spots" designed for children and their parents...
...His attack on hunger among the poor met widespread incredulity in the mid-'60s ("Nobody starves in America...
...dence suggesting that presweetened Kool-Aid caused tooth decay...
...after they fainted they got reacquainted?'twas the first time in years they had spoken...
...Arnold Schaefer, Nutrition Program Chief for the U.S...
...They chose television and its advertisers, particularly the sponsors of those Saturday morning cartoons that seem to mesmerize millions of youngsters...
...Whatever devices are chosen, my own view is that the countercommercials ought to attack more than malnutrition...
...As one looks at advertising aimed at children today," observed Choate, "one has to admit there is an imbalance, a marshaling of forces on the side of the sponsors, the producers, the filmmakers and the jingle writers, that no 5-to-ll-year-old can match...
...The limericks are only one of many ideas he is considering...
...He and I discovered that a research team at Indiana University possessed eviperiment from the start and had all the information in its files...
...More recently, in testimony before several Senate subcommittees, and amid anguished howls from the food industry, he has pointed a finger at many breakfast cereals, snacks, juices, and soft drinks, charging that they are nutritional ciphers, chock-full of "empty calories...
...but the chemicals soon began to balloon, and he floated back home to Moline...
...Hence the limericks...
...Given the fda's strange indifference to consumer protection, it was only a matter of time before Choate and others began seeking additional pressure points...
...After sampling 7,500 households, the Department of Agriculture reported that one in every five American families was the victim of a nutritionally deficient diet...
...He sprinkled his meats with gallons of sweets?now he's a toothless King of the Beasts...
...To this day few of these substances have been thoroughly tested...
...some, like cyclamates, have proved to be far from harmless...
...A couple who lived in Hoboken discovered their TV was broken...
...Public Health Service, told a Senate committee in 1969 that malnutrition "occurs in an unexpectedly large proportion of our sample population...
...if he couldn't persuade he wouldn't be paid, so he shouted and shouted and shouted...
...The evolution of Choate's thinking represents a capsule history of recent consumer-advocate struggles and frustrations...
...In 1958 the agency had published its notorious gras list naming more than 500 chemicals that it insisted were Generally Regarded As Safe...
...Perhaps three-fourths of the commercials directed at children promote food products...
...In September 1970, after heavy pressure from reformers, the FDA hired the National Academy of Sciences to develop a set of voluntary nutritional guidelines for certain products, including TV dinners, snacks and other prepared foods...
...We then turned to the FDA, which had been monitoring the exmeaning that the FDA was finally willing to investigate which chemicals were safe and which were not...
...He singled out expectant mothers, infants and teenagers as persons frequently deprived of sufficient proteins, vitamins and minerals...
...they should challenge our national tendency to accept without serious question everything shown on the tube, not to mention our masochistic capacity for watching it...
...Ihave been writing limericks of late for Robert B. Choate, that estimable gentleman who a few years ago waged a one-man crusade against hunger...
...The normal American diet," declared a typical FDA "consumer-aid" booklet, "includes such a variety of foods that most persons can hardly fail to have an ample supply of the essential food constituents...
...I've got 30-40 mouths to feed in my [research] group and I'm not going to do anything that would endanger them...
...Brandishing the evidence, Choate and other activists sought redress from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a Federal agency that had supposedly been protecting consumers ever since Congress passed the Pure Food Act in 1906...
...Choate also kept nagging the FDA to take action against the many presweetened drinks appearing on supermarket shelves...
...But the FDA was not worried about malnutrition...
...If you have any countercommer-cial notions of your own, send them to Robert Choate, 1346 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D. C. They don't have to rhyme...
...But the university had conducted its tests under contract with General Foods, the producer of Kool-Aid, and was unwilling to release the results...
...Yet ultimately both the Congress and the White House were compelled to accept the unpleasant news that thousands of povery-stricken children were subsisting on near-starvation diets—a major victory for Choate and his cohorts but by no means an end to the fight...
...Here are a few limerical suggestions: There was an announcer who doubted his viewers would buy what he touted...
...For example, Dr...
...A lion I knew from the East got breakfast confused with a feast...
...He envisions a series of "coun-tercommercials" to encourage a protective skepticism among young TV viewers...
...The American diet has deteriorated in the past decade," noted Nader's Raiders in The Chemical Feast (1969...
...There was a wise fellow from Stowe who exchanged his TV for some snow...
...The mass impact of these ads," says Choate, "is: 'Kids...
...Government investigators discovered that the poor were not the only victims...
...The agency took the position that the findings contained possible trade secrets and therefore could not be made public...
Vol. 55 • September 1972 • No. 18
