Am I twice as healthy, because I have had two diet cokes?” Jed, age 7”
- Children don’t have the mental capacity to understand diets and healthy eating. The marketing targeted towards them confuses them and can even manipulate them into thinking that they are eating healthy.
“The crisps still packed full of fat but fried in obscure oils that are ‘low in polysatures.’ You say it once and it sounds good but repeat it, and like all PR puff, it dissolves away to nothing really new, nothing you really needs and in all probability nothing you would really enjoy.”
- Marketing fads give short-term satisfaction, tricking consumers into buying the product before they think twice.
“The glossy new veneer of ‘better health’: Smarties with the artificial colours taken out; gummy chews in which sugar and artificial ingredients fuse with 25 percent fruit juice for a natural feel; everywhere you look, saturated fat, but lower than before.”
“Foods that used to be considered a treat are now an everyday option.”
“More people are overweight (1 billion) than starving (800 million).”
“Diets in the 1950s were close to today’s healthy eating guidelines. Researchers suggested that the increase in soft drinks and snacks was the major factor in the deterioration in children’s diets. Hence, levels of key nutrients such as fibre, calcium, vitamins and iron has decreased.”
“Parents are notoriously poor at judging whether their children are overweight. In part, this is because media coverage - with examples of a 14 stone 9-year old - encourages a sense that
obesity is an extreme condition.”
Type 2 diabetes used to be known as ‘late onset’ diabetes because you had to be over 40 to get it. Now, 5 year olds have type 2 diabetes.
Four year old children have double the amount of salt in their food that health professionals recommend.
“With convenience foods, not everyone has to eat the same thing or at the same time. Children can be offered choices. And so, the food industry has developed more and more products - many of which are high in fat, sugar and salt - that target this new way of eating and markets them heavily both to parents and children.”
“Parents struggle hard to ensure that their children do not go without - and make sure that their lunch box is no less full than those of their class-mates. In a perverse way, having less healthy food is about status and not losing face. Again, the food industry has products for all of this, competing for space in the lunchbox, knowing that it is easier to put snacks in, even if they are less healthy.”
“The success of children’s junk food in commercial terms is awesome. Of these, the most profitable ‘big six’ are sweets and chocolates; soft drinks; crisps and savoury snacks; fast food: convenience foods; and pre-sugared breakfast cereals.”
“For every £1 spent on advertising and marketing fruit and vegetables, £70 is spent advertising chocolates and snacks.”
Pam from Devon, parent and community dietitian: “I am a parent and a community dietitian and am exhausted in trying to combat the advertising messages that undermine my parental role and work.”
Researched by Ofcom revealed that foods high in fat,sugar, and salt account for 80-90 per cent of all TV food advertising spend. The response by the Food Advertising Unit was to hire other academics to try and discredit the findings. Companies didn’t necessarily have to believe their food products were wholesome and healthy - they simply had to hire someone to suggest they were.
“The moral is that if you want to encourage responsible advertising to children, then you have to take an approach that addresses the full mix of marketing and not just a part of it.”
- In terms of branding being the whole issue.
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