Junk food advertisements appear on remote learning platforms

For school kids in Maine, brightly colored digital advertisements for sugary cereals, processed-meat snacks, and fast foods appear alongside the curriculum on popular online education platforms, Maine’s Press Herald reports. Advertising unhealthy foods to kids further exacerbates the glaring inequity in education and access to healthy food that Covid-19 has turned into a national crisis. Even more galling: Parents have the option to pay extra to remove advertisements on their children’s screens. By law, for food products to be advertised in schools and educational platforms, they have to meet the same nutritional standards that are in force for food that is allowed to be sold in the schools.

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