Fat chance for junk food ad bans
Lara Sinclair
September 07, 2006
RESEARCHERS looking at the effect of advertising on rising obesity rates are hoping to spark a global movement aimed at pressuring the World Health Organisation to ban advertising for sugary or high-fat foods aimed at children.
Researchers who supported the ban at an international obesity conference in Sydney this week said social marketers tackling the obesity issue needed to think laterally to combat the multi-million-dollar advertising budgets of food companies.
New tactics might include joining forces with other health bodies, asking fitness companies to contribute a levy to a healthy living campaign, and involving ordinary people in a grass-roots marketing push.
"That is what is needed: a movement," said Gerard Hastings, professor of social marketing at Scotland's Stirling University. "Getting into bed with people who are marketing smoking cessation may be a possibility," Professor Hastings said. "They'll be targeting a very similar group."
This week the International Association for the Study of Obesity, which convened the obesity conference, became the first member of an alliance of five health bodies to back an advertising ban that would see junk food marketing regulated in a similar way to tobacco advertising.
Other members of the alliance, which includes international heart, diabetes, child health and nutrition research bodies, are considering the proposal.
It would ask WHO to ensure its member states, including Australia, overruled self-regulatory systems to legislate against marketing unhealthy food to children under 13 years of age, as well as keeping schools commercial-free and regulating the internet and satellite pay-TV channels.
The proposal is the most ambitious plan yet seen to curtail the advertising of high-sugar, high-fat foods to children, but it was dismissed by Australia's peak national advertising body yesterday as pie-in-the-sky thinking.
"They know that we've got a code that covers 90 per cent of what they talking about and they chose to go the other way and pursue a marketing ban," said Collin Segelov, executive director of the Australian Association of National Advertisers.
The advertising and media industries took just three days to get the Jo Lively healthy living advertising campaign developed under the auspices of the AANA back on air this week.
Neville Rigby, director of policy and public affairs for the IASO, said it was hoped health ministers of countries that were signatories to WHO would support tough new principles underlying the ban.
But Health Minister Tony Abbott this week reiterated the federal Government's opposition to regulating food advertising to children, saying advertising bans did not work.
Professor Hastings said Quebec, where obesity levels are not noticeably different from other countries despite a ban on junk food advertising, was often used as an example by advertisers who opposed regulation.
However, he said the ban appeared to have had some effect: French-speaking families in Quebec that were not exposed to cross-boarder advertising from the US, had less junk food in their houses than English-speaking families.
Researcher Tim Lobstein, who heads IASO's child obesity taskforce, said 30 years of self-regulation had failed to address the problem.
Nutrition and Obesity
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