PHLP organized nearly 40 legal scholars to speak out against an industry campaign aimed at thwarting new federal nutrition recommendations for food and beverages marketed directly to children. Letters submitted to federal agencies and the White House dispute industry's claims that the proposed recommendations violate the First Amendment.

Because of concerns about children's nutrition and childhood obesity, Congress asked the FTC to join with the FDA, CDC, and USDA to develop recommendations about the types of foods that would be appropriate to market to children and in what media. The federal agency collaboration, known as the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children (IWG), recently released its recommendations outlining proposed voluntary action based on research on children's health.

The government's proposed recommendations, if finalized, would simply suggest how companies can improve the nutrition quality of the foods they market to kids. No company can be compelled to follow voluntary guidelines.

But the food and advertising industries have launched an aggressive campaign for the proposal to be withdrawn, charging among other things that the nutrition recommendations violate the First Amendment.

In a letter sent to agency officials at the FTC, CDC, FDA, USDA, and the White House, a cadre of eminent law professors explain that because food and beverage companies are free to ignore the nutrition recommendations, the draft principles "do not restrain or compel anyone's speech. They are not, in fact, government regulations at all."

The recommendations, they add, are akin to the USDA's new MyPlate dietary guidelines for Americans or to the National Institutes of Health's call for limiting youth exposure to smoking in movies.