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*Advertising is not bad for children’s health*
You may recently have seen calls in the media for the government to ban advertising of certain sorts of foods to children. These demands, made by a number of alarmist lobby groups, put the blame for a supposed epidemic of ill-health and obesity amongst Australian children on the advertising of convenient popular fast foods, (which those groups prefer rather contentiously to call “junk foods”) to children. Although our children’s health is obviously something we need to be very careful about, on reflection it can be seen that calls for an advertising ban are ridiculous and ill-founded. In fact, there is no clear evidence to suggest that children are becoming less healthy, and even if they were it would obviously be unreasonable to hold these providers of convenient, tasty cuisine to young consumers and their busy parents responsible.
Let’s examine, in a clear and dispassionate way, the evidence being used to justify these calls for advertising to be banned. It will become clear that there is no good reason to take such drastic and unprecedented action.
The arguments in favour of banning convenience food advertising are premised on the untested assumption that children are suffering from poorer health now than they were in the past. Despite the attention being given to these sorts of claims, however, there is no clear proof that Australian children are becoming less healthy. A recent survey conducted by the NSW government of over 5000 children aged 4-16 in schools across NSW, found that the percentage who were overweight or obese had only risen by about 5% since 2008, to around 25%. This means that a vast majority of children are still of a healthy weight or below. The survey also found that children were exercising significantly more than they were in 2008, and we all know how important exercise is for good health.
In fact, contrary to claims of the ‘health food’ lobby, it seems likely that the good health enjoyed by Australian children may in part be attributable to food providers such as McDonalds and other chains currently being so harshly demonised in the media.
Take Ryan, aged 9, as a typical example of one of the children lobby groups claim to be so concerned about. He is fit, intelligent, and of a healthy weight. He plays organised sport, summer and winter, and rides his bike to school. And yet, when asked what his favourite food is, he cites among his favourites many of the foods the do-gooders complain about most: burgers, fries and pizza. No-one could seriously suggest that young Ryan is anything but a model of good health, which makes it appear that some of the dietary lobby’s concerns are more than a little out of place.
Another reason for thinking that companies such as McDonalds should be being praised, not condemned, for the effects they have on children’s health is their involvement in children’s sport. Without sponsorship offered by such companies, many junior sporting competitions could not afford to run at all, robbing children of the opportunity to keep fit and healthy.
Research reports have been recently appearing in some media, supposedly demonstrating links between consumption of fast foods in childhood and health problems such as diabetes in later life, but these reports are being supplied to the media by the very groups who most want to make things difficult for companies producing these foods, so it is hardly surprising that they have come up with these sorts of studies. Most of them are probably not interested in our children’s eating habits at all, but are just anti-big business.
Even if some of the health concerns we are hearing so much about were justified, there is good evidence that placing a ban on advertising to children would not be an appropriate way to deal with those concerns.
For one thing, a representative of the Australian Association of National Advertisers reports that advertisements for food aimed at children do not really make them eat any more of these foods than they otherwise would. Companies advertise not with the aim of making children eat more, but with the aim of increasing that company’s market share of what children do eat.
Besides, we are talking about advertisements shown during programs designed for primary school aged children, and how many 10 year-olds do you know who get to do their family’s food shopping anyway? Are they really the ones who make the purchasing decisions? If not, how is limiting the advertising those children see going to make a difference?
Relatively speaking, Australian children aren’t such big consumers of convenience foods anyway. In the US, it is estimated that around 30% of public high schools have fast food franchises, and US has not seen it necessary to ban the food industry from advertising to children.
For the government to be bowed by a vocal minority of objectors and ban the advertising of these foods to children would be a disservice not only to the companies who would suffer directly from the proposed bans but to the community they serve. Advertising is the only way these producers have to share information with the community about their products. Children, like all consumers, need to have access to this information, to allow them to be well educated about their food choices and make an informed decision about their own health.
With or without advertising, no-one forces children or their parents to buy foods from these providers unless they want to. So rather than trying to inflict their own prejudices on everyone else, it would be more reasonable for all these groups of ‘concerned parents’ and lobbyists to simply make their own decisions for their own families, and trust other families to do the same. Isn’t this still a free and democratic society?
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