When not one but three reports came out recently blaming everything from advertising to restaurant menus for childhood obesity, officials at H.J. Heinz Co. could take some satisfaction in knowing the company had already acted on the issue.

The Pittsburgh food giant completed in October a set of worldwide guidelines for marketing and advertising that paid particular attention to children.

There’s no telling quite how far the hunt for bad guys will go in the debate over Americans’ tendency toward obesity at an early age, but many food businesses are quietly taking steps to mollify some of the critics.

For example, King’s Family Restaurants, a Pennsylvania and Ohio chain, which serves more than 100,000 kid meals a month, has been tinkering with its children’s menu and may do more once it’s done with a major update of the regular menu.

“We have some things on (the kids’ menu) maybe we should take off,” said Jim Harrington, vice president of marketing and advertising for the White Oak, Pa.-based company.

Harrington just returned from an industry conference in Miami where session topics included one featuring a lawyer talking about people looking for reasons to sue, such as the McDonald’s hot coffee incident in which a woman from Albuquerque, N.M., initially was awarded $2.7 million when she suffered severe burns from coffee that spilled on her legs when she was driving with it between her legs. Or a New Yorker who sued several fast food chains, blaming them for his health problems because their advertisements didn’t adequately reveal the contents of their food.

Special attention is now being focused on food marketed to children because families are eating out more often, Harrington said. Meals out are becoming less of a special treat and more of a staple in the U.S. family’s diet.

In recent studies, the American Psychological Assn. and the Kaiser Family Foundation argued children’s exposure to advertising for unhealthy cereals, candy and snack foods were contributing to an epidemic of youth obesity.

The psychologists were particularly concerned about marketing to children under 8 who are unable to critically comprehend advertising messages. In their report, Kaiser officials said marketing, which often enlists favorite TV characters such as SpongeBob and Scooby-Doo, affects children’s food choices.

The third release, from the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, critiqued restaurant children’s menus. It triggered a quick defense by the National Restaurant Assn., which said the group was sensationalizing the issue and vilifying the food industry.

“It’s one of the hottest issues right now in the restaurant industry,” said Adam Golomb, spokesman for the Homestead, Pa.,-based Eat’n Park chain. The company has long offered a free salad bar for children under 5 but continues to tinker with its children’s menu, planning a couple of new healthy items to add this spring.

Obesity and marketing to children — individually and in tandem — have been on the national radar screen for a while.

Last year, a federal judge tossed out a suit against McDonald’s restaurants by teens who blamed the chain for their weight issues. He said they might have a better case if the food were shown to be more dangerous than could reasonably be expected. Later, a lawyer sued over artery-clogging trans-fatty acids in Oreo cookies.

In July, Oreo maker Kraft Foods Inc. announced global initiatives to address the rise in obesity. And at an analysts’ conference where Heinz Chairman William Johnson also spoke of his company’s efforts to address marketing to children, Kraft touted new products such as Kool-Aid Jammers, with only 10 calories, and Oreo 100-calorie packs formulated to have zero grams of trans-fat.