I haven't recently visited the boneheads at the "Center for Consumer Freedom" (an intentionally misleading name for a bunch of restaurant and food-service industry interests) for a while, but not because they've stopped being boneheads. I just decided that it wasn't good for my soul to speak only negatively, and there is nothing (OK, very little that I'm aware of) else that can be said of these ... people.

Also, I wanted to sound more than one note, and there is certainly plenty that needs said on the topics of obesity, food addiction, nutrition, and the politics thereof, besides what lies and mistruths these folks peddle.

However. 

In this entry, the headline is, "Are advertisements making kids fat?" and the only common-sense answer is, "obviously." But, they answer differently, of course. Let's start with the first line:

A new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports that kids are getting too many calories from “junk” foods, like sugary drinks, pizza, and whole milk.

That's news right there. Actual scholarship, landing on top of other piles of actual scholarship, shows that Kids. Are. Getting. Way. Too. Many. Calories. From. "Junk." Foods. Sounds like an interesting, important topic. 

But do they want to talk about that? Of course not. Who, after all, is making all that junk, and profiting from its sale? Their funders! To me, it's impressively foolish to bring up the study at all. 

No, they choose to ding, again, Dr. Kelly Brownell of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, for pointing the finger at the role of marketing, again, in this circumstance.

I'll leave you to go read the entire five paragraphs over there, if you want, but in the interest of my own brevity, I'll just cut to this: In addition to the funding for this sham front, junk food manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year trying to influence us into buying more of their products.

While their mouthpiece downplays its influence, they must think it works, to spend so much, no? Can there be any other conclusion?

 Does any reader out there think that all of us are not tremendously influenced by marketing messages?

Does any reader out there think that kids, whose intellects are still developing, are not the easiest target for marketers?

Does any reader out there think that the marketers don't think that, considering how overwhelmingly children's programming is underwritten by junk food ads aimed at kids?

Gimme a frickin' break! 

Meanwhile, one last note on the center's post, because I can't resist: 

But "is it making children fat? Nope. The White House’s childhood obesity task force reported in May that 'a causal link between marketing and increasing childhood obesity rates has yet to be firmly established.'” [emphasis mine.]

Do you see what they did there? They make a blanket statement "proving" their point — "Nope." — and cite one report whose strongest assertion is that the link hasn't been "firmly established"? What I take from that is that it's been somewhat established, but even if the original report is neutral, no honest person could draw "Nope." from it.

Once again demonstrating, by their own hands, that the Center for Consumer Freedom a group whose very name seeks to hide its aims, cannot on be relied on to convey the truth.