Lorraine Courtney: Only outright ban will stop ads aimed at kids

THIS week the Government proposed new guidelines that could make the concept of a cartoon character pushing sugary cereal a story you bore your grandchildren with. In an effort to curb childhood obesity, these new voluntary rules limit how food companies can market unhealthy foods to kids and teens.

Almost a third of Irish children are now overweight and our country ranks 58th out of 200 countries for its proportion of overweight youths, according to 2017 statistics by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration. Baby fat isn’t harmless. That’s one-in-three children facing a lifetime of increased risk of serious health issues and premature death because of food and lifestyle choices they had little control over in their childhood.

It’s no small coincidence that childhood obesity rates are highest in the countries where junk food advertising is least regulated, like in the US, the UK, and Australia. Sweden and Norway don’t allow advertising targeted to under 12s. Greece forbids toy advertising before a 10pm watershed. Otherwise a child is likely to sit through up to 11 ads per hour on television for cereals, crisps, fast food and fizzy drinks, and none for healthy foods. When did you last see a carrot commercial?

There’s one easy move that could help save our kids from a potential lifetime of health problems: ban junk food advertising to children outright. We know this works. In the Canadian province of Quebec people consumed 19pc less junk food than in the neighbouring Ontario after food advertising targeting children under the age of 13 was banned.

Our new voluntary codes of practice restrict the advertising and marketing of food and nonalcoholic drinks. They apply to “non-broadcast advertising” of high fat, sugar, and salt foods, like fizzy drinks and sweets, and include an agreement on reduction in advertising, marketing and sponsorship of high fat, sugar, salt food and drinks in various settings. The codes will complement Broadcasting Authority of Ireland regulations on restricting broadcast advertising of high fat, sugar and salt foods to children.

You might be thinking that this sounds dangerously like meddling by an over-eager nanny state, but four-year-olds need to be protected. If a handful of children were getting low marks you would question their ability or lack of support with school work. But if a third of the class was failing you’d be more likely to question what was happening in the classroom itself.

I hate the nanny state, but the Government’s latest proposals to cut the scandalous amount of advertising of junk food to children doesn’t go nearly far enough. Left to themselves, advertisers will barely scratch the surface of their advertising ethics. If the Government was to stop the advertising of junk food during children’s television programmes, it would not be unreasonably authoritarian. It would just give growing children some protection from the aggressive, sustained attentions of a multi-billion-euro industry which will eventually make them very sick.

The new code is only voluntary and there is much more the Government can and should do. It has the authority to restrict marketing aimed at children and also has sway over what goes into food (for example, Denmark has banned trans fats in restaurant foods). There is little point in one branch of the Government spending millions a year on a healthy eating campaign if another sits back and allows advertisers to sell fat, sugar and salt to the most innocent and impressionable audience of all.

It’s not fair to put all of the blame on parents here. No matter how often you’ve warned your kids that you’re not buying any junk food at the supermarket, they still badger you relentlessly. A group of researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US identified nagging as the main reason parents buy food with little nutritional value for their kids.

THEY carried out a study in 2011 and found that there’s this thing called “nagging” and children are quite adept at using it to get a six-pack of crisps into the shopping trolley.

“Our study indicates that while overall media use was not associated with nagging, one’s familiarity with commercial television characters was significantly associated with overall and specific types of nagging,” they said. “In addition, mothers cited packaging, characters, and commercials as the main forces compelling their children to nag.” The researchers concluded the best way to reduce nagging for junk food is to limit the amount of adverts they see for unhealthy foods.

Marketing any product directly to young children is sneaky, but marketing those that are contributing to a dangerous and preventable health epidemic should be banned. This week we made a start, but we need to finish the job, banning junk food and fast food peddlers from targeting children who haven’t even learned to tie their shoe laces.

One-in-three children faces a lifetime of health issues because of food choices they had little control over