From: Hope Damon [gchait@tds.net]
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 9:21 PM
To: FDA Chief Counsel Daniel Troy
Subject: RE: FDA Docket # 02N-0209

Hope Damon
447 Old Springfield Rd.
Sunapee, NH 03782


September 9, 2002

FDA Chief Counsel Daniel Troy

,   


Dear FDA Chief Counsel Troy:

On behalf of US children, I urge you to implement stronger regulation of 
commercial advertising aimed at children.  As you know, the average US 
child sees more than 40,000 advertisements a year on TV alone, and food 
commercials account for most TV advertising during children's peak viewing 
hours. On Saturday mornings, children see one food commercial about every 
five minutes.  As a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator, 
I daily see the impact of this marketing.  Children are growing up 
believing that super-size meals are normal, that quick meals are good 
enough, that it is cool to eat mostly fatty foods.  There are many 
influences on any individual's eating choices but the power of advertising 
to sway children's beliefs is unparalleled.  We can expect continued 
increases in diabetes, heart disease, obesity and eating disorders if the 
current marketing is allowed to continue.  I urge you to limit advertising 
time and require a balance of commercial marketing and public service 
announcements directed at promoting healthy choices and realistic body 
image.

From 1992 to 1999 the amount spent marketing to children shot from $6.2 
billion to $12 billion. It is time for FDA to be much more assertive in 
regulating marketing aimed at children. 

Such regulation poses no real threat to freedom to do business. We're 
still free, productive, capitalistic - and the biggest economy in the 
world -- even after 30 years of pollution regulation by the EPA. Chemical 
companies haven't gone out of business just because they can't dump 
carcinogens into Love Canals anymore. Consumers, government -- even 
chemical companies themselves - expect those companies to operate without 
blatantly threatening our health and well-being.  It's time to adopt the 
same attitude with the marketers who dump toxic messages and products into 
the stream of US childhood. It is past time that we hold advertisers 
accountable for their commercial exploitation of children.  Please think 
about your children and grandchildren's beliefs about food as you consider 
this issue.  It is ethically wrong to buy children's food preferences when 
there health is at stake.   Sincerely,


Sincerely,


Hope Damon, R.D., CDE