'Junk ads' can damage our kids
Children around the world are becoming increasingly vulnerable to overweight and obesity. The International Obesity Taskforce estimates that around 45 million of the world’s school-age children are obese – about 3% of the population of children under 5 years old. It is widely recognised that the modern transformation of lifestyles, including widespread sedentary behaviours and dramatic increases in the consumption of foods that are high in fat and sugar and low in nutrients, are behind the pandemic of obesity-related conditions, including type 2 diabetes.
In fact a growing body of evidence links obesity-related health risks, particularly in children, with the intake of sugary soft drinks. These potentially harmful foods and beverages are marketed globally using highly effective and increasingly sophisticated tactics. There is growing concern regarding the links between the marketing of food and soft drinks to children, and the global rise in childhood obesity. This is hardly surprising: many of the food products and drinks that are produced for sale to the child market are considered unhealthy – high in energy and low in nutrients. There is substantial evidence that marketing influences children’s food preferences. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has concluded that there is probable evidence for a link between intensive marketing of fast-food outlets and energy-dense food products, and the risk of childhood obesity.
Children are exposed to such promotion primarily through television advertisements. In addition, the multi-national corporations of the processed food sector use increasingly sophisticated tactics to ensure that their products form part of children’s lives. For example, applying methods that have been successfully tried and tested on adults, products are ‘placed’ within films and television programmes produced for children. The seeds of brand recognition are sewn during the early years using games and toys (the familiar point-of-sale collectables that encourage children to persuade their parents to choose one brand of fast food over another). Brand loyalty is maintained and enhanced in later childhood via clubs, competitions and school sports sponsorship programmes. The opportunities offered by the huge increase in internet use have not gone unnoticed by skillful marketers, who have been able to effectively occupy much of children’s living space. The president of the International Diabetes Federation commented recently that, in terms of diet and lifestyle, the right of children to a healthful living environment requires urgent protection. But the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity has continued to rise in almost all of the developed and many of the developing countries alongside the global proliferation of fast-food outlets, and the society-wide advertising of high-energy, low nutrient foods and sugar-sweetened soft drinks.
The price of economic success
Sadly, the price of the success of this highly profitable business is becoming all too clear. Prevalences of obesity of around 30% are now common among children in countries like the US, UK and Australia.
The densely populated urban communities in many developing countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa are seeing worrying increases in overweight and obesity-related disorders in young people, including type 2 diabetes. The potential societal and financial burden in these developing nations is huge: obese children who go on to develop type 2 diabetes during adolescence or early adulthood are at increased risk of developing disabling and life threatening complications during their ‘productive’ adult years.
The direct healthcare costs (treatment, hospitalisation) and indirect costs (lost work days, disability benefits) are a serious threat to the development of low- and middle-income countries.
Furthermore, other health risks to children with overweight and obesity are numerous, and potentially highly costly in human and economic terms. These include psychosocial problems (social exclusion, depression), cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and musculoskeletal disorders.
Profits and protection
The promotion of food and drinks to children is a highly contentious issue; opposite ends of the debate are occupied by stakeholders in public health and the industry.
Those representing business interests uphold their right to market their products freely. Children are perceived as components of a lucrative market that is open for exploitation. Indeed, children not only spend their own money, they influence parental spending on food and beverages – a potent force in a multibillion dollar global market. Marketers call this ‘pester power’.
Proponents of unrestricted marketing place the moral accountability for controlling children’s nutrition entirely on the shoulders of the parents. The industry accepts little responsibility in curbing marketing practices, nor does it recognise a role for governments to intervene in order to protect children’s rights to health over the industry’s rights to profits. Parents in many countries, however, are increasingly asking to be supported in their role of guiding their children’s food choices.
Children’s health should be the responsibility of societies in general; all stakeholders should contribute to creating the safest possible environment for our children.
Inadequate measures
In many countries, the marketing of unhealthy products to children is openly discussed in the quest for effective strategies to tackle childhood obesity. However, while regulations on food advertising exist in a number of countries, there remains a lack of strong government policies. Children’s continued exposure to unhealthy food advertisements – and the rising rates of obesity – would suggest that the current restrictions are inadequate. Sweden, Norway and Quebec have bans in place against advertising potentially harmful products to children under 12 years old. However, even such legally binding restrictions are regularly undermined by cross-border transmission of television programmes that require compliance with the regulations of the transmitting country, rather than those of the receiving country.
In the UK, a recent review of the regulations governing television advertisements for food and drinks to children recommended increased restrictions on the promotion of unhealthy foods. While this measure improved the previously existing situation, it did not meet the requests of a number of interest groups to ban advertising of potentially harmful food products to children before 9 pm.
Tackling the environment
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, takes a stand on protecting children against all forms of exploitation, including unscrupulous marketing. The International Obesity Taskforce recently released the Guiding Principles for Reducing the Commercial Promotion of Foods and Beverages to Children, which advocate a child’s right to live in an environment that is free from commercial pressure. The Coalition on Food Advertising to Children was formed in Australia in 2002, comprising healthcare and consumer groups.
The Coalition calls for a ban on all food advertising during children’s peak television viewing times, and for healthy eating messages to be aired through non-commercial social marketing (see website below). Healthcare providers have a particular responsibility to support the campaign for environments and policies that support healthy choices.
In the case of childhood obesity, the growing number of clinical interventions cannot be sustained, nor do these address the underlying causes of the problem. If we are to have any impact on the struggle to reduce this serious public health problem, we will need to address the ‘obesogenic environment’ with society-wide initiatives and strong and comprehensive policy interventions.
Kaye Mehta is a lecturer in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Flinders University of South Australia, and a founding member of the Coalition on Food Advertising to Children.
This article is reproduced by kind permission of Diabetes Voice, the offical magazine of the International Diabetes Federation.
APP/KOL/AC 19/12/2008
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Volume 5 Issue 3 Autumn 2007 Diabetes Ireland Magazine
Last updated: January 2008