Time to cut cord in same way cigarettes were stamped out
Even at a mere 20 years’ distance, the British sporting tableau of 2001 looks like a portal into a parallel universe. Golf was still staging the Benson & Hedges Invitational at The Belfry, snooker’s World Championship still bore the banner of Embassy, while Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari remained sponsored by Marlboro cigarettes.
In just two decades, tobacco has morphed from a platform for aspirational advertising into a product that must warn consumers with jarring images of diseased lungs and rotting teeth. It is apt to ask whether, as part of the post-covid reckoning, sport in this country is approaching a similar point of inflection in its relationship with junk food.
After a year-long cycle of lockdowns, with inactivity at record levels and children’s outdoor games criminalised, sport’s Faustian pact with food and drink laden with sugar or salt is one of the great incongruities of our age. As the Football Association strives to revive grass roots, it continues to trumpet the wares of Mcdonald’s, Walkers, Snickers, Coca-cola and Lucozade. The League Cup is named after Carabao, a Thai energy drink. The English Football League operates the Papa John’s Trophy as part of its deal with the American pizza franchise.
So much for Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s insistence that the pandemic has given the UK a “deadly wake-up call” on its obesity crisis, with the nation the third fattest in Europe even before coronavirus hit. On one level, the Government acknowledges it must redress the damage of forcing much of the population into sedentary torpor for 11 months. But on another, it continues sanctioning a status quo where major sports are financially dependent on companies peddling the fatty, oversweetened junk so injurious to public health.
Some of the products of these sponsorships are for the good of public health – grass-roots coaching clinics, home schooling and Cadbury using its football ambassadors to support lonely people, a project on which The Daily Telegraph collaborated – but they are of course underpinned by selling more of their produce.
It feels relentless, this bombardment across sport of messaging promoting unhealthy eating. Perversely, it is seldom more acutely felt than at the Olympics, where the parade of toned bodies coexists uneasily with gaudy monuments to fast food.
In 2021, sport’s consorting with the junk-food giants makes no more sense than its symbiotic association with tobacco did 20 years ago. We know their products are bad for us, we know the obesity issues to which they contribute are potentially lethal as a respiratory virus stalks the planet, and yet we continue to shout them from the rooftops regardless. But should the FA keep glorifying a packet of crisps? Should its children’s football events, of all things, still carry the branding of Mcdonald’s?
The British Medical Association argues children need to be steered towards exercise, not fattening snacks. This cutting of the junkfood cord will not happen quickly. But the Government’s strategy on obesity needs to be escalated.
In this debate, there is individual responsibility. But sadly, the power of fast food has grown so vast that it is only effectively curbed by direct decree. Over the coming years, this country must demonstrate all it has learnt from the Covid calamity.
Tackling obesity in the young by removing tempting sugar rushes appears, on the surface, to be one of the easiest wins of all. The difficult question for sport is whether, if it rejects the blandishments of fast food, there will be enough alternative suitors to fill the void.
For reassurance, it needs only to examine the evolution of Formula One, where the tobacco kings were forced out and a panoply of blue-chip brands took their place.
It should have the courage, therefore, to tackle one of its central hypocrisies head on. Sport can no longer preach about the significance of public health while being in the pocket of those who would do it harm.