Marketing of unhealthy food to young children

Time to get angry, get active

Madam

Your columnist Geoffrey Cannon⁽Reference Cannon¹⁾ is clearly one of the world’s most benign parents. While gently chastising governments when they fail to regulate the more harmful products of commerce, he sweetly suggests that the food industry is only doing what it is set up to do – sell its products – when it markets its junk to children. He reserves his criticism for civil society groups who are ‘mistaken’ for being ‘anti-industry’.

Most parents come to feel differently. Firstly, they are anxious about what their children eat and what they as parents should be trying to do about it. Then a few of them get angry about what they are being sold and at the cynical, manipulative methods being used to do the selling. Lastly, just a few parents move to the stage of getting active and making complaints – complaining at the supermarket checkout about the array of confectionery at child height, complaining at the school about the lack of water fountains, complaining at the swimming pool about the vending machines, complaining to their governments about TV advertising to kids. And they may get more active, by joining and supporting civil society groups who are lobbying to get regulations in place so that parents – all parents, not just the active ones – benefit from a less commercialised world for their children.

It is mischievous to suggest that civil society is crudely anti-industry and should only target the sections of industry which makes harmful products. That is exactly what civil society groups are doing – and what is more, we can thank civil society for the creation of one of the most interesting developments of the decade: the definition of junk food using nutrient profiling⁽Reference Lobstein and Davies²⁾. This has helped regulators and the industry see exactly what needs to be targeted, and it has led the UK government to put this definition on the statute books, much to its credit.

And before Geoffrey Cannon excuses junk food companies for only doing their job, he should know just how bad they get. I have infants’ counting books which use branded confectionery (M&Ms) to teach children numbers. I have kids’ competition vouchers to ‘win your weight in Kinder chocolate’. I have promises to remove sweets from the checkout from a supermarket, which were reneged upon a year later. I have chief executive witness statements saying they do not encourage children to pester their parents, from the same company that advertised for marketing staff to develop their ‘pester power’ team. I have promises from companies not to market to children under 12, while I find their logo emblazoned on toddlers’ sports vests and on swimming kit for primary schools.

I could go on, but the point is simple: We will not encourage companies’ good behaviour by excusing their bad behaviour, nor encourage better corporate responsibility by smiling benignly at their irresponsibility.

Time to get a little angry, Geoffrey. And then get active – with us!