KCS workers at a rally final 12 months.
Photograph courtesy of KCS
When New Yorkers go to Korean Group Providers (KCS), they typically search training for way of life adjustments, vitamin counseling, and assist for stopping and managing power situations. Many are seniors or people who find themselves food-insecure in want of nutritionally balanced meals and different wellness companies to take care of their well being.
Past restricted entry to recent, nutritious meals, they’re additionally up in opposition to a robust menace: predatory meals advertising and marketing backed by mega-corporations. With deceptive meals and beverage advertisements dominating each digital house, a lot of our shoppers merely purchase whichever merchandise they see most. Too typically, they’re shocked to be taught that most of the meals they’ve lengthy consumed are dangerous to their well being. Excessive-calorie gadgets like white rice, soju, and prepackaged prompt noodles, that are equally heavy in sodium, prime the record of merchandise to which our neighborhood’s overexposed.
This misinformation isn’t their fault — it’s the results of deliberate trade advertising and marketing techniques. Meals and beverage firms spend billions on advertisements selling sugary drinks, salty snacks, and nutrient-poor meals. They aggressively goal communities of shade with predatory advertising and marketing, pushing unhealthy merchandise onto unsuspecting shoppers. Analysis reveals that these advertisements play a serious function in widening racial well being disparities, disproportionately reaching these with the least entry to reasonably priced, nutritious meals.
That’s why New York should take motion to curb these misleading practices by passing the Predatory Advertising Prevention Act (PMPA).
Sponsored by State Senator Myrie and Meeting Member Reyes, the PMPA would enable the New York State Lawyer Normal to research and restrict predatory meals advertising and marketing geared toward kids, seniors, and residents with disabilities.
Given the alarming rise in power diet-related sicknesses statewide, New York must act quick and move this invoice. Roughly 13% of Asian New Yorkers have been recognized with diabetes and 24% with hypertension. In neighborhoods like Flushing—the place KCS is predicated and 55% of residents are Asian—the affect of such advertising and marketing is obvious. In our neighborhood, as much as 16% % of adults eat a minimum of one sugary drink a day.
Seniors, specifically, are a rising goal of those aggressive advertising and marketing techniques. Many depend on mounted incomes and are drawn to cheap, closely marketed processed meals that declare to supply comfort however as an alternative contribute to worsening well being situations. In response to a 2022 examine, older adults who repeatedly eat ultra-processed meals have a 24% larger danger of cognitive decline. For seniors and shoppers like ours, managing diabetes, hypertension, or coronary heart illness, predatory advertising and marketing is particularly life-threatening.
KCS is working with different well being suppliers and advocacy organizations to assist shut these racial well being gaps, however we’d like robust public well being laws to bolster our efforts. The PMPA affords simply that. Our state should seize this chance to safeguard New Yorkers from dangerous meals advertising and marketing and advance public well being.
We’re nearly there.
The New York State Senate simply included the PMPA in its 2025 one-house price range decision, and the invoice obtained a vote of confidence from the Senate Committee on Client Safety. However there’s extra work forward to formally enact the PMPA.
We urge the complete legislature to behave now and move the PMPA throughout this legislative session. The well being of our neighborhood members will depend on it.
Myoungmi Lim (left) and Sara Kim (proper). Photograph courtesy of KCS
*Myoungmi Kim is the CEO and Sara Kim is the Program Director of Public Well being and Analysis Middle at KCS. The Korean Group Providers of Metropolitan New York (KCS) assists Korean-People and different immigrant communities within the better New York Metropolis space with financial empowerment, social well-being, and well being and wellness. Myoungmi Kim leads the group as CEO and Sara Kim is the Program Director of Public Well being and Analysis Middle.
