Know Your FACTS
The Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score (FACTS) was developed to scientifically measure food marketing to youth. While young people are exposed to marketing for a variety of food products, cereal was chosen as the first food category to be evaluated using FACTS because cereal companies target children more often than any other sector of the packaged food industry. The amount of money cereal companies spend on marketing to children exceeds $156 million per year on television alone.
Food marketing to children negatively influences children's dietary intake and contributes to the childhood obesity epidemic. This public health issue was recognized by the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization in 2006, prompting food companies to take self-regulatory action. The food industry's efforts to self-regulate, like the Smart Choices program and the Council for Better Business Bureau's "better-for-you" foods initiative, have been criticized for lenient nutrition standards and failure to fully implement stated goals. Cereal FACTS was designed to evaluate the impact of these food industry commitments and to highlight the changes that are necessary to help reduce obesity in children.
Cereal FACTS was developed based on the best available science, in consultation with a steering committee of experts in nutrition, marketing, and public health. To learn more about the science behind Cereal FACTS visit the Researchers page and consult the Cereal FACTS Report and Cereal FACTS Report Summary. For a summary of nutrition and marketing findings for cereal companies and brands consult the FACTS sheets. To explore the study findings with rankings and search tools see the Consumers page.
