Disney is pushing healthier food options. But will kids bite?

"With this new initiative, Disney is doing what no major media company has ever done before in the U.S.--and what I hope every company will do going forward."

That is Michelle Obama's view on Disney's new guidelines to curb junk food advertising. It's publicity that money can't buythe First Lady simultaneously heralding your company as a leader in its field and inviting other companies to follow suit. The decision clearly comes with political heft behind it, but how meaningful of a change the company is making remains in question.

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Under the new guidelines, all food and beverages advertised, sponsored, or promoted on outlets including the Disney Channel, Radio Disney, and Disney websites will have to conform to limits on areas like caloric, sodium, and sugar content.

"We've been looking at the Disney criteria they're using, and they're a little bit better than the criteria that the food industry already uses, but they're not great. So by no means will this limit children's exposure to junk food," says Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

She points to the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a program in which some of the nation's largest food companies have come together to self-regulate the products advertised to children. Harris notes that the Disney guidelines differ little from the CFBAI guidelines already in place.

For example, Disney's new guidelines allow meals marketed to children to have no more than 600 caloriesthe same limit established by the CFBAI. Disney and CFBAI also both allow a six-ounce yogurt to have a maximum of 170 calories. Likewise, both allow 350 calories for a main dish or entree.

To be fair, cutting calories is still cutting calories; the company allows slightly lower counts of calories for several other foods, like cereals (130 per ounce versus CFBAI's 150 per serving for most children's cereals) and juice (140 for eight ounces versus CFBAI's 160 per serving), as well as "mini-meals" (400 versus CFBAI's 450 for "small meals").

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Nutrition Push May Be a Little Better for Kids, Great for Disney