According to UConn’s Rudd Center For Food Policy and Obesity, food marketing aimed at children contributes to poor diet and childhood obesity.
Jennifer Harris, associate professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences, says food companies spend approximately $2 billion a year marketing food to children and teens. This extensive marketing of unhealthy snack foods aimed at youth is a likely contributor to this increase in obesity and other diet-related diseases such as diabetes.
This past January, Harris joined the College as a faculty member, holding a joint appointment with UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (CHIP). Harris has served as the director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center for eight years, first with the Rudd Center at Yale University, and for the last year-and-a-half when the center became part of UConn. The Rudd Center falls under the CHIP umbrella as an InCHIP Center.
