Coca-Cola ‘targeting obese children with truck tour’
COCA-COLA is targeting childhood obesity hotspots on its Christmas truck tour, a senior MP said last night.
Half of the locations on the sixweek schedule have above average numbers of overweight youngsters, Tom Watson’s analysis has found.
They include Manchester, Birmingham and Greenwich in south-east London, where 41 per cent of 11-year-olds are overweight or obese.
Mr Watson, who is Labour’s deputy leader, said: ‘I don’t think it’s too strong to say that Coke is poisoning our children with the sugar in their products.
‘This Christmas tour is shamelessly marketed at kids and it almost seems like the company has picked areas with very high levels of child obesity and depravation. If Coke had any decency or awareness of the health impacts of their products they would stop giving out full-sugar drinks to children. The nation’s health cannot afford these kind of flagrant marketing stunts.’
Running since 1995, the Christmas tour was inspired by ColaCola’s Holidays Are Coming advert. It deploys a 14-ton truck from which staff hand out free 150ml cans of full-sugar Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero.
The company insists no cans are handed to children under 12 but Labour officials claim young children were given regular Coke in Greenwich last weekend. Mr Watson, who has managed to reverse his type 2 diabetes through weight loss, has written to CocaCola, to call for a rethink.
‘You should not be handing out free full-sugar Cokes to children anywhere, let alone handing them out to children in areas of high child obesity and dental decay,’ he said. In Newcastle and in Croydon, south London, two other stops on the tour, 38 per cent of children are overweight or obese.
A 150ml can of Coke contains 15.9 grams of sugar, two thirds of the recommended daily allowance for children. A full-size 330ml can of the soft drink contains 35 grams, 45 per cent above the recommended daily allowance.
Nationally, 33.4 per cent of 11year-olds are either overweight or obese, up from 31.6 per cent in 2008 when totals were first recorded. Figures released yesterday show that an amputation due to diabetes takes place on average every hour, a rate 20 per cent higher than four years ago.
Mr Watson was able to beat his Type 2 diabetes by losing seven stone, reducing his sugar intake and increasing exercise.
He is now an anti-sugar campaigner and is urging people in February to cut out all fizzy drinks including diet brands that can induce sugar cravings.
Coca-Cola was contacted for comment last night.
Last week it pointed out that its tour is focusing on its new Coke Zero Sugar brand; that no one under 12 is handed a free drink; and that less than half of the Coca-Cola now sold in the UK is the full sugar.