Junk Food Ads Found To Influence Children’s Diets
Calls to ban junk food advertising to children look set to intensify after a report from the Food Standards Agency proved the link between food commercials and children’s deteriorating eating habits.
The report concluded that children are strongly influenced by ads promoting soft drinks, sweets, snacks and breakfast cereals containing sugar. It revealed that they enjoy and engage with this type of advertising, which actively affects their preferences, purchase behaviour and consumption.
The research will provide further fuel to health campaigners who have been pressurising the Government to ban the advertising of junk food to children in the face of an increasing health crisis and rising levels of childhood obesity in Britain (see Advertisers To Block Ban On Advertising Food To Children).
Commenting on the report, Kath Delmeny, policy officer for the Food Commission, said: “This report is a call to action. Children are already eating too much fat, sugar and salt, yet we allow them to be systematically targeted with advertising for unhealthy foods.”
She continued “The Food Standards Agency’s review provides the evidence of what parents have known all along, advertising encourages children to choose unhealthy foods and to pester their parents for them,”
This latest research presents advertisers with a double edged sword. On the one hand the success of advertising to children will be welcomed, but at the same time advertisers are keen to distance themselves from the notion they could be encouraging damaging habits amongst impressionable children.
Advertising groups have inevitably lobbied against any moves to ban junk food commercials aimed at children, in much the same way they lobbied against the ban on cigarette advertising and current proposals to ban the advertising of alcohol (see Advertisers To Block Ban On Advertising Food To Children).
Earlier this year the UK’s chief medical officer commented: “There is a case for adopting the precautionary principle for the marketing of foods to children.” He also recommended: “Regulating the promotion of foods through schools and other approaches, to discourage the consumption of products high in fat and added sugars.”
The Food Standards Agency recommends the debate should now shift to assess what action is needed, and specifically how the power of commercial marketing can be used to bring about improvements in young peoples eating.
Consumer groups are hoping the research will help bring an end to the advertising of unhealthy foods to impressionable children.
However, the Advertising Association’s Food Advertising Unit recently unveiled a new research study which shows 87% of parents don’t believe that food advertising should be banned (see Research Tackles Food Advertising To Children).
Food Standards Agency www.foodstandards.gov.uk
Recent Research Stories from NewsLine Research Reveals Spending Power Of Over Fifties Research Urges Media Planners To Recognise Direct Mail Research Reveals Spending Power Of The Superwoman
Subscribers can access ten years of NewsLine articles by clicking the Search button to the left