I’m not absolutely sure that the calls to ban junk food advertising will have the effect that many moms and pressure groups expect it to.

There can be no doubt that foods high in fat, sugar, salt (FSS), preservatives, additives or anything, for that matter, unnatural and inorganic, is not good for you if taken in high doses or in levels that don’t fit with other foods in a balanced diet.
It is no surprise that there are many lobbying moms out there who want to rid the world of junk food and feel the best initial step is to ban the advertising of these products.

This week there has been a clammer for the Federal Trade Commission(FTC) in the USA to clamp down on the glut of TV advertising seen by children and the high percentage of promotions seen on kids TV channels in the States, especially on Nickelodeon.
This week they held a conference to discuss the measures that should be applied to manufacturers to curb their levels of advertising to kids and they followed this up with an announcement of new restrictions which will apply to advertisers. The measures are voluntary!

The Twitter world has been aglow with people in the anti camp and we’ve heard very little from the food manufacturers themselves. Groups such as  #OCmoms, #Boycottnick, #momblog and the campaign for commercial free childhood (@commercialfree) have been tweeting and arranging petitions against Nickelodeon, in particular, for “brainwashing” our children. The baton has been taken up int he UK by Sustain who wish to prevent junk food being used in product placement or advertiser funded programming.
Whilst I have enormous sympathy for these campaigns I can’t help feeling the objections are slightly over the top and actually mis-guided in their approach. What is the ultimate aim?
Are they addressing the symptoms or the cause? Will these campaigns actually succeed in reducing obesity or in improving the diet of their children or indeed, the holy grail; will they get the manufacturers to change the make-up of their products so that they contain less of what is so bad for us?

Let me say here that I have no sympathy for the food manufacturers and junk food restaurants; they haven’t helped themselves with their behaviour over many years and meanwhile have made $billions by keeping us mis-informed and uneducated about their foodstuffs. They continue to produce foods they say that the “consumer wants” and then hide behind spurious claims for the products that hide the real levels of FSS and hope that consumers won’t notice or they make sure there is no education in order to help parents make wise dietary decisions. This is unethical and I feel they have brought all of their present troubles on themselves.

So, will banning all junk food advertising on children’s TV work?
Assuming that the ultimate aim, in my view, is to reduce childhood obesity, then I say no it will not work. It hasn’t worked in the UK where we banned it a couple of years ago.
There is no advertising in the UK on kids TV channels for foods considered high in FSS based on UK government benchmarks. Obesity has not reduced in the UK and children still crave after a MacDonalds or Burger King. The reasons?
One reason is that there are so many ways to communicate with children and as many people within this debate realise children don’t watch as much kids TV as they do “adult” TV. The cereal manufacturers have simply taken their money out of the kids TV channels and dumped it in larger numbers into Saturday night shows such as The X-Factor (UK’s Pop Idol). The levels of in-school promotions by these brand owners has also increased considerably through Internet “educational” programmes.
However, the key reason this doesn’t work is that children’s key form of communication and the ultimate arbiter of what is cool is the playground, or the after school club, or the bedroom with brother and sister. The only way you’re going to prevent the passing on of these messages is by putting on blinkers and stuffing in earplugs. Children are savvy communicators, they know what advertising is and whilst we all have a duty of care to protect the young, we are not the keeper of their own rights as individuals to know what’s going on and eventually to make their own decisions. In cases where parents dominate and say “they know best” at all times, we have the corollary to Nickelodeon’s said “brainwashing”.

So what’s my solution to this crisis? And I’m not just throwing this word out there, the obesity levels of children with a western diet constitutes a crisis.

As a comparison I point people to the ban on tobacco advertising in the UK. This was intended to reduce smoking and it was felt the tobacco giants would be the poorer for it. Actually the result was no decrease in smoking levels (it went up with young women!) and the nett result was higher profits for manufacturers! It was only when public opinion swayed against smoking that the government then banned smoking in public places and people started to think seriously about their habit and less people have taken it up.
What I’m saying is that it is in the court of public opinion where the changes get made. It is the consumer who ultimately decides the outcome.
A similar case is the one of “drink driving” which for years was considered OK by many as long as not too drunk, but gradually public opinion has made it extremely anti-social to drink and drive and the result is big reductions in conviction levels.

So here is my solution. Let’s make the over-consumption of foods that are bad for you as anti-social as smoking and drink driving. Let’s make it cool to be healthy. If you’re a kid you can still be a rebel, be anti-establishment, inquisitive and uber-cool and not eat too many burgers!

Consumers need to unite against the manufacturers in a different way and attack the cause and not keep putting sticking plasters over the symptoms. Let’s be holistic and force the manufacturers to change their ways.

We need to be “outing” the brand owners and informing everyone of the dishonesty apparent in many marketing camapaigns. This shouldn’t be directed at governments and lobbying them to help as there are too many vested interests here; it is down to us, the consumer, to pressurise the brand owners.
We know this can work as only last month Kelloggs were forced to drop a campaign that claimed cereals were a boost to the immune system and a help in prevention of bird flu!

What the manufacturers are scared of is having to be honest about what is in their products and are fighting hard not to participate in a system we call “traffic lights” in the UK, where key components in foods are given a green (low), amber (OK) and red (high) rating. Categories are fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and calories. One supermarket int he UK (Sainsbury’s) already applies this to all their own-label foods and I congratulate them for it – It doesn’t stop you buying foods with red lights (I love cheese) but it does make you think about the balance of foods you are buying. (in the States you have GO, SLOW, WHOA)
The manufacturers are scared stiff of such a regulation being forced upon them and will fight extremely hard to prevent it. That must beggar the question why? And the reason is that they won’t be able to be unethical and dishonest any more; cereal manufacturers would have to admit that their products are stuffed full of salt and sugar and not so much of the “wholegrain”!
I believe the upshot of this won’t be eating a lot less cereals, as breakfast is a good time to get this energy, but that moms will be aware that their children should have less salt and sugar in the lunchbox or later at dinner. It’s about balance! The same goes for other “bad” foods; there is no reason to completely ditch them, just understand how often they should be eaten.

We have to apply the pressure to the manufacturers and not hope governments will do it for us. It’ s time to set up a campaign where we publish the information the brand owners don’t want us to and in a way that is simple to follow and which ultimately will get the manufacturers to do the right thing. To do that we must tell each other (and everyone else) the truth about brands and what’s in them.

For my part I am setting up a “real” kids products review blog and web site where we can all send in the truth about kids brands and rate them in a simple and easy to understand way and in a way that will make the brand owners take notice. I’m hoping to launch this soon; Does anyone want to join with me to make this happen quickly?

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