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PACKAGING
Governments should regulate marketing unhealthy food and beverages to children, says the European Commission.
What are they selling our kids?
A
ny idea what your children ate today? Whatever it was, chances are it contained significant amounts of sodium benzoate (E211), Sunset Yellow (E110), Ponceau 4R (E124), salt, Aspartame (E951), Carmoisine (E122) – oh, and probably lots of sugar. But that’s what you get from a diet of high-fat cereal bars, energy drinks, cheese slices, pizza and crisps. It’s also the reason why childhood obesity rates in Europe are so high: of the 70 million five to 18 year olds in the EU, more than five million are obese and 11 million overweight. Britain, along with some southern European countries, is top of the list and millions of those children are so overweight they are already showing signs of chronic diseases, which could lead to major problems in adulthood. In the EU more than 560,000 have high blood pressure and more than 640,000 primary school-aged children in Europe suffer from high cholesterol, with a further 640,000 suffering from Non Alcohol Fatty Liver Disease. A sedentary lifestyle is partly to blame but so, increasingly, is diet. According to a UK Government National Diet and Nutrition Survey, 92 percent of children consume more saturated fat than the maximum recommended level for adults, and 83 percent consume added sugars above suggested limits. And because they are so busy heeding the call of marketing pitches for fi zzy drinks and high-fat breakfast cereals, many European children only have time to eat less than half the recommended daily portions of fruit and vegetables.
Packaging Food Marketing to kids.indd 96
Of the 70 million five to 18 year olds in the EU, more than five million are obese and 11 million overweight
“92 percent of children consume more saturated fat than the maximum recommended level for adults”
Chairman and Founder of the International Obesity Task Force, Professor Phillip James, warns we face an ‘epidemic’ of childhood obesity and point the fi nger fi rmly in the direction of food marketers. “Children are targeted as consumers and are vulnerable to sophisticated marketing techniques and intense, repetitive advertising for the high-calorie, high-energy foods and drinks which are significant contributory factors to the rise in obesity. The marketing pressure starts well before they reach school age and is designed to ‘overtly manipulate the child to demand a high-energy-dense diet’.” It’s one of the reasons behind a review by the European Commission to look at measures to restrict the advertising of unhealthy foods to children. Tim Lobstein, director of policy at the International Association for the Study of Obesity (ISAO) was commissioned by the European Commission to draft a report aimed at gathering evidence to support policy making on the marketing of foods to children. Entitled the EU Polmark Study, it looked at the range and nature of current advertising regulations on food and beverage marketing of foods to children in 27 EU member states, and aimed to promote an understanding of current and anticipated regulatory controls, as well as researching the relationships between stakeholders’ positions on marketing controls and their capacity to influence policy. “There has been significant progress in the past six years to curb the marketing of unhealthy foods to kids, but there is chaos within the details,” says Lobstein. “An increasing
07/01/2011 15:20