Advocating for Companies to Stop Advertising Junk Food to Kids

In May of 2015, Dairy Queen dropped soda from its kids’ meals. This action, an important step in reducing food and beverage marketing to kids, came after continued pressure from parents, advocates, and members of the Food Marketing Workgroup, coordinated in part by PHI’s Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG). Dairy Queen now joins McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway, Panera Bread and Chipotle in not offering soda as its default beverage for children.

The Food Marketing Workgroup is a network of more than 130 organizations and academic experts working with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grantees and the American Heart Association to reverse childhood obesity by focusing its advocacy on competitive foods, sugar-sweetened beverages and food marketing. BMSG provides technical assistance, resources, and avenues for both online and on-the-ground advocacy around the nutritional quality of kids’ meals, food marketing in schools, the predatory marketing of junk food and soda to low-income children and children of color, and more.