Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Re “Ad Rules Stall, Keeping Cereal a Cartoon Staple” (front page, July 24):

Once again, the food industry objects to tougher advertising standards.
It claims its own voluntary guidelines are sufficient to protect public
health, even though these rules label Froot Loops and other high sugar,
fat and calorie products as healthy. Independent research has
consistently shown that the food, alcohol and tobacco industries fail to
enforce or comply with their own voluntary standards and that these
standards do not achieve their health objectives.

Inadequate federal oversight of the financial and energy sectors has
recently created acute economic and environmental crises. Failure to
safeguard the public against the misleading and deceptive marketing of
the food, alcohol and tobacco industries has contributed to slow-motion
crises of epidemics of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and some forms
of cancer.

American voters will need to decide if we are willing to sacrifice the
health of current and future generations to the ideology of unfettered
markets.

Nicholas Freudenberg
New York, July 24, 2010

The writer is distinguished professor of public health at the City
University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College.