By Justine Hodge
Last week the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) released its revised ‘Advertising to Children Code' heralding "major changes". This was a great opportunity for the advertising industry to demonstrate corporate responsibility and to attempt to make significant impact towards improving the health of Australian children.
Australian children are amongst the world's highest viewers of junk food advertisements on television. Nearly 30% of children are now overweight or obese and levels are rising rapidly. This is no mere coincidence. Obesity and health experts across the globe agree that children are directly influenced by the foods they see advertised on television, and that the use of premium such as toys and competitions result in increased pestering for the specific products that they are associated with.
Sadly, the new AANA Code does not make any real headway in controlling the high levels of junk food advertising to children or the use of pester power to sell unhealthy foods. The media release distributed by AANA claims that the new Code includes a "prohibition against ‘pester power'"; however the detail of the Code actually states that an advertisement "must not contain an appeal to children to urge their parents or carers to buy a product for them".
How often do you see an ad in which a child directly nags their parent to buy them junk food? The reality is that this will change nothing. Advertisers will still be able to give away free toys, tie-in with the latest movies and offer competition prizes to lure children into pestering their parents for unhealthy foods.
On a positive note, I am pleased to see that the new Code expands the definition of advertising to include other types of marketing communications such as product websites and other forms of direct marketing such as sampling giveaways on magazines. This is as small step in the right direction, but so much more needs to be done.
Parents are sick of the never ending tirade of unhealthy food ads on TV and they are fed up with being pestered to make purchases because of the lure of a toy or the chance of winning a competition prize. The new Code is only a baby step forward when much larger advancements are needed to protect our children from the food industry's pervasive junk food marketing techniques.
The Parents Jury is an online based forum of over 3,100 parents who are interested in improving the nutrition and physical activity environments of Australian children. We recognise that junk food marketing to children is just one of a number of important issues that are contributing to the rising levels of overweight and obesity in children. We urge the Australian government to legislate against the insidious practice of junk food advertising to children.
Justine Hodge, The Parents Jury Manager
http://www.parentsjury.org.au
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Justine Hodge has been the Manager of The Parents Jury for the past three years. She has over 12 years experience as a communications specialist in the corporate, consumer and not-for-profit sectors in London and Melbourne. The Parents Jury is a not-for-profit organisation funded by Diabetes Australia - Vic, WA and QLD, The Cancer Council Australia and its member bodies, VicHealth, and the Australian and New Zealand Obesity Society.
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Comments
the never-ending struggle against junk food
It is so hard to keep kids eating healthy foods when they are bombarded from all angles with encouragement to do otherwise. I strongly support a ban on advertising junk food during children's television programming, and I think Justine makes a good point in that we need to look outside television advertising at other ways kid's food choices are influenced.
In fact I think the commercial stations would be doing themselves a favour by self implementing such a ban. I don't let my kids watch commercial television specifically because I don't want them to annoy me with requests for chocolate bars and chips when we go shopping - it's only partially effective, but I know a number of parents who do the same. It's not the programming that I find offensive - it's the ads - and if they were more selective about how and who they allow to advertise during kids television programming I might rethink the rule.
The other area I'd like to see tackled is school fundraising which is so often based around chocolates, cakes and or ice-creams. There are other ways to make money that aren't so damaging to our kid's health (not to mention our own).
I think we need to balance the calls for bans with calls for positive action, like the "fruto vego" days in NSW public primary schools where once a week all the kids have to bring along a piece of fruit or a vegitable and eat it together in class. It's resulted in my four year old marching through the door and demanding she gets a carrot for lunch "like the other kids".
Nonetheless I commend the parents jury for their work, and hope their campaign proves successful.
We are still far away from getting it right
All valid points - but schools unfortunately are only part the way there. I suppose it differs from school to school, but canteens need to really look carefully at what they are selling to kids.
In one primary school I know of, they are against hot chips, but they sell hot dogs and chicken nuggets. They don't sell any chocolate or lollies, but they churn out slushies (full of sugar) like you wouldn't believe. It's their most popular item.
While I do think advertising using cartoon characters and the like is wrong to a point - as with most things, it starts where kids spend most of their time - at school and at home. I know it's hard when you're at the supermarket and the only thing your child wants to purchase is Shrek's dairy snacks - but we cannot blame advertising entirely.
It's very much like the classic debate on how "responsible" the media is for our actions. Does it create violence, or merely reflect it? It's too easy to blame external factors on our problems. Advertising, like every other business, is there to make money for its clients. Even organisations like the National Rugby League is referred to as a "business" now, dictated by money and status, with factors like being a "one club man" taking a back seat.
So, if advertisers come up with a successful campaign, then by their measure, they have done a good job. Whether they should factor in whatever legitimate "damage" they might have caused in the process is another issue.
Choose the school...
... I simply wouldn't send my kid to a school where chips were sold in the canteen. And I honesty don't think a principal who allowed that to happen would have the kid's interests foremost in his/her mind.
Next stop federally mandated bedtime
Children are raised by their parents not the state. Nasty as McDonalds' burgers may be and annoying as all advertising is, the increasingly accepted idea that it's right and proper for the Government to have laws telling us what to think and behave every moment of the day is pernicioius in the extreme. In a totalitarian society everything which is not prohibited is compulsary and ideas coming out of the 2020 summit - bans on junk food advertising and compulsary thirty minutes of exercise at work - smack more of the Soviet Union in the 1970s or today's North Korea than a free society. Should we have an army of informers ringing the police whenever they see a child eat a packet of crisps rather than an apple? Should teachers frisk their way through children's lunch boxes? Should the police mount raids on families suspected of owning a microwave?
If you don't want kids to eat junk food then don't buy them any. If you don't want them watching TV then turn it off. If you want to fight 'pester power' then why not just teach your kids what 'no' means. If you ban all junk food adverts when children might be watching (before nine p.m.) and doubtless all toy adverts too then commercial stations simply won't put on any children's programming. Parent's can't palm off their responsibilities to the state. Advertising is already heavily regulated, as is the rest of life, but what really needs controlling is the power of a small, self richeous minority who revel in the power to tell everyone else how to spend their money and how to live their lives.
Is cheese going to become something seen only on the black market? Is chocolate only going to be sold from locked safes in back street shops with blanked out windows? There is never any end to this. How about squads of inspectors checking that not only is your child eating a banana but that it's an organic, fair trade banana whose skin is at least thirty percent black to stop guilt obsessed latte liberals being 'offended' on someone else's behalf. How about a ban on car adverts because they promote global warming, cosmetics adverts because they promote the objectification of women and house adverts because they discriminate against the 'socially excluded' who can't afford them?
Or how about letting everyone get on with their lives free from incessent nagging and pestering, not from the advertisers, but from the overbearing state and its apologists?
Simple logic...
Countries that don't have junk food adversiting on their TVs in kids viewing times don't have problems with childhood obesity - countries that do... do.
Like it or not Nick, we live together in a community and a society, and need our government to take positions which are beneficial to all. I don't understand why you are so keen to defend the Cadbury's right to promote it's products to kids, or whatever company happens to come along. What if it were nicotine, speed, heroine... where do you draw the line? If you could tomorrow support a legislation which will ultimately save thousands of lives, prevent painful and debilitating medical conditions - why wouldn't you? Simply because you have a taken a political position and you'd rather defend it than take a practical approach.
There are countries where governments don't interfere with your life - they're called failed states.
To mandate or not to mandate, that ...
is not a question really.
Our daily lives are already governed by a series of regulations whose purpose is to protect us from ourselves. I can understand Nick's reluctance to let parents off the hook. Yet I remain grateful that society feels it is OK that I be protected from from people who might otherwise drink and drive.
Not all products that are purported to deliver better health are allowed to be used on the basis of "buyer beware" and we are generally OK with our Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) looking at safety and efficacy and protecting us from some of the more dubious stuff.
And as a parent, I can well recall times when I would have been very very VERY grateful for a little support in trying to convince a couple of young, crying children that healthy food was a better option than a well advertised box with something edible inside AND a toy as well. There are enough stresses in a household with children without having someone come into your house through the TV screen to subvert the education you are trying to impart to your children. Yes, I could also have had an argument about watching TV, but some days seem so long ...
I have no doubt that if the debate was about someone coming into the house trying to convince my children to smoke cigarettes, there would be very little support for the freedom of speech and parental responsibility argument.
We have been watching the problem for years. We can see parents failing to overcome it. We are seeing young children and adolescents developing adult onset diabetes and insulin resistance, precursors to heart disease. And we listen daily to the outcomes of a free market that really doesn't solve all problems as a consequence of rational and predictable market behaviour.
If you asked me today whether I thought we should legalise tobacco because people have a right to choose to smoke, I would argue that sometimes the community needs to make decisions to protect people from themselves, and that the downside of tobacco use far outweighs the personal freedom that would be lost if I was to rule against it being a readily available product. I don't think my taxes should be committed to dealing with the health after-effects of that liberty.
Isn't it time we stopped thinking that because food can be consumed in a safe manner if done properly, the market, freedom of advertising, and a notion that personal liberty (the same liberty that allows the bearing of arms in some societies) can never be challenged, should all be placed before the protection of our children from themselves, and from us - from our own weaknesses as parents?
I'm not asking anyone to ban people from selling burgers. But I really would like to think the rest of the community could support me in my efforts as a parent and allow me to resist the burger temptation without having to battle the barrage of advertising. Did I have to watch my kids gain weight AND develop an animosity towards yet another restriction they felt I was imposing?
Please don't make it legal to sell my children cigarettes. Please don't reduce the drinking age. Please don't give my kids access to gambling venues more than they already have. Don't introduce a right to bear arms into this country. And please accept that the advertising of junk food is a community issue and not just one of parental control. It is about a health system that is already under pressure having to face a generation of people whose chronic illnesses developed in a burger bar or soft drink parlour. It is about an economy that will be asked to support people in their 30's, 40's and 50's - ages that are currently referred to as productive years - when they are battling the earlier and earlier onset of heart disease and diabetes.
Sure! Feel free to label me as a failed parent. I can happily live with your critique, but it would have been worth every criticism if it also came with a little constructive assistance in limiting the messages that were coming from all around my kids and mostly out of my control, messages that contributed to tension and family disharmony. I admire the parents whose parenting style has avoided these issues and maintained family harmony AND good diet. But I recognise the statistics that tell me that there are too many parents out there who haven't succeeded in protecting their children from this harm. I think I would prefer to help them than to blame them, and I think that government has a responsibility to help them and protect them too, a role which should have priority over its tendency to protect the notion of a free market.
Stan Goldstein