Government can play several constructive roles in fighting the childhood obesity epidemic, but regulating soda ads is not one of them. Although the study released this week by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity reports that children are seeing more advertisements for sugary drinks than ever before, that claim simply doesn’t gel with the facts.

Studies show that from 2004 to 2010, food and beverage ads per average child aged 2 to 11 years old decreased from 2,500 to around 1,250. In that same time-period, advertising for cookies, snacks, snack bars, candy, and gum/mints decreased 65% to 99%. There could be a few reasons for this trend: the now-universal use of the remote control allowing kids to skip over commercials; a shift in preference from broadcast to cable television which has fewer overall ads; and multi-tasking during TV viewing.

While marketing is a convenient scapegoat, the reality is that children have become increasingly sedentary and variables including but not limited to household structure, education and language, poverty, housing, health environment and food environment all influence the probability of being obese for children aged 6 to 17 years old.

Nonetheless, the author of the Yale study urges federal agencies to "step in and corral marketing and labeling practices." Proposed nutrition guidelines developed by the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children (IWG) would do just that, deeming even healthy foods such as low-fat yogurt and Cheerios as “unmarketable” to children. Even though the IWG recently announced that it would retool its guidelines to make them less severe, it doesn’t change the fact that “voluntary” guidelines on food marketing are not a smart use of government. Given that there is no correlative evidence between marketing and childhood obesity, these backdoor regulations are still targeting the wrong culprit.

In a paper I recently co-authored for the Bernard Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy, we argue that these proposed guidelines will not reduce childhood obesity in the United States because they do not address the real triggers for obesity in America: poverty, a lack of access to healthy and affordable foods, and an inactive lifestyle. Furthermore, these guidelines have serious socioeconomic consequences. The cost of reformulating food products deemed “unmarketable” to children will increase food prices for the families that can least afford the increase, particularly low-income and minority families. The advertising ban will also limit information that parents and nutritionists can access in order to make the best food choices, and cost jobs in the agriculture, manufacturing, and marketing industries that will impact every state.

I do agree, as does nearly everyone on both sides of this debate, that American childhood obesity rates are a serious problem that must be addressed. If the government wants to make a more meaningful impact, it should leave parenting to parents and refocus its efforts on reducing poverty by increasing access to education and income levels, fostering economic growth to eradicate food deserts, and curtailing regulatory over-reach. It should also revisit the role of physical education in public schools, and increase the supply of healthy and affordable grocery outlets in rural and underserved communities.