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7 ConclusionThis survey of children’s food products – products intentionally marketed to or forchildren – has found that the majority are foods rich in sugar, saturated fat, totalfat or salt. We found more than eleven bad products were being marketed forevery good one.If food companies were deliberately trying to undermine the nutritional status ofchildren they could hardly achieve this more effectively. The survey hadexcluded products that are well known to be of poor nutritional quality – such assoft drinks and confectionery – and did not investigate the foods marketed tochildren in fast food restaurants and service stations. We suspected the largemajority of products in these categories would be high in fat, saturated fat, sugaror salt. But having set these aside it might have been expected that the remainingfoods aimed at children would be of good nutritional quality. Sadly, this was notthe case.As discussed in section 2.2, children are exposed to a wide array of messages thatencourage them to buy – or persuade their parents to buy – products that aremarketed particularly for them. Parents cannot be expected to persuade childrento ignore this marketing, or ignore the products in the supermarkets. If theproducts are putting children’s health at risk, then controls may be necessary, bothon the nature of the products and the marketing and labelling of them.The present survey found some examples of healthy foods being promoted tochildren. These initiatives are to be applauded: the energy devoted to promotingthe current range of foods should, we believe, be devoted to encouraging theconsumption of far better diets. This hope – that food companies could be a forcefor the good – underpins our recommendations from the present survey. Therecommendations are given in the Summary section at the start of this report.30