Program Summary
In accordance with FDA's efforts
to address the epidemic of obesity in the United States via
healthful dietary management, an educational outreach campaign was created to
reach the tween market (ages 9 to 13, specifically) and their parents.
- The program offers simple, actionable information for tweens, encouraging
them to seek out the Nutrition Facts on the food label, understand the
information it provides, and use it for making healthful choices related to
their own dietary management.
- Parents are a secondary target of the program. Parents of
tweens serve as influential role models for their children, and are in the key
position to reinforce the messages of the outreach campaign in the home.
Objective
To combat childhood obesity by empowering "tweens" to
look for and use the Nutrition Facts on the food label.
Key Messages
- Check out the serving
size. Remember that one package isn't necessarily one
serving!
Action: Use the
serving size to discover the total number of calories and nutrients per
package.
- Consider the calories. When looking
at a food's calories, remember: 40 is low, 100 is moderate, 400 is high.
Action: Pay
attention to the calories you eat throughout the day. The Nutrition Facts
label is based on a 2,000 calorie diet -- but your calorie needs might be
different. To find out what your "target" calories per day are, visit <www.MyPyramid.gov>.
Go to My Pyramid Plan.
- Choose nutrients wisely. Pick foods
that are lower in certain fats, cholesterol, sodium, and sugars, when
making daily food choices.
Actions:
- Nutrients to get less of (trans fat, saturated fat,
cholesterol, sodium, sugars): 5% Daily Value (DV) is low.
- Nutrients to get more of (potassium, fiber, vitamins A &
C, iron, calcium): 20% Daily Value (DV) is high.
The Two-Tiered Campaign
Primary Campaign: Reaching "Tweens" ("in betweens" ages 9 - 13)
Overall Program Strategy: Engage tweens in reading the
Nutrition Facts label and using its information in their dietary management
choices.
- Creative Approach/Strategy: Brand the Program and Make it Actionable
- FDA
has created a dynamic brand concept for the Nutrition Facts program that will
get tweens to not only read the Nutrition Facts, but to make decisions and
choices based on the information they discover there.
- The brand is entitled Spot the Block: Get Your Food Facts First
- Outreach Strategy: Deliver the Brand to Tweens Nationwide
- Using Spot the Block as a springboard, we are partnering with Time-Warner's Cartoon
Network to broadly deliver the brand to tweens across the U.S.
- Cartoon Network is delivering the messages via broadcast on-air spots, integration with
existing Cartoon Network characters, and the Cartoon Network's Web site.
Secondary Campaign: Reaching the Parents
As a companion effort to the Tween program, FDA is developing a complementary Parent Outreach Campaign.
- Parent Outreach Objective: Help parents help their children as they learn to use the
Nutrition Facts label.
- FDA and Spot the Block are serving as the parents' partners in helping them
help their tweens make wise nutrition choices.
- For updates on Spot the Block Parent Outreach, visit www.cfsan.fda.gov!
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