The average Australian child is exposed to 3,640 television food advertisements per year, including 2,190 for junk food!
(NB: this is based on 2 hours of TV viewing per day, and assumes that this viewing is only on commercial TV channels and during children's peak times)
- Who is Burger Corp?
- How does food advertising affect children’s health?
- Who is protecting children from unhealthy food marketing?
- When will the Government make a decision?
- What needs to be done?
- How can you be involved?
- Campaign Supporters?
Who is Burger Corp?
Burger Corp represents all of the food companies that market unhealthy food to children. He infiltrates your home unannounced and unwelcome, and preys on your children. While he might look friendly and give away free toys, there is a hidden agenda behind his smile – to promote unhealthy food to your children.
The Burger Corp campaign has been developed to highlight the audacity of the food industry who market unhealthy food to vulnerable children, whose brains are not sufficiently developed to understand the persuasive intent of advertising.
By signing up to this campaign, you are asking the Government to protect children from unhealthy food marketing.
How does food advertising affect children’s health?
Childhood obesity has reached alarming levels in Australia, and is now amongst the highest in the world, with almost a quarter of all children either overweight or obese.
Food marketing influences children’s food choices and their diets. Most food marketing is for unhealthy foods, such as sugary breakfast cereals, confectionery, high-fat savoury snacks, soft drinks and fast food. This impacts on the quality of children’s diets and can ultimately affect their weight. Restricting unhealthy food marketing to children is an important step towards preventing obesity.
Food marketers target children for three main reasons:
- Children have their own money with which to make purchases
- Developing children's brand loyalty will ensure lifelong purchases
- Children are influential in their parent's purchases. Advertising encourages children to nag their parents for a product, known as “pester power”, which undermines parents' attempts to provide a healthy diet for their children.
Who is protecting children from unhealthy food marketing?
The current government regulations do little to protect children from unhealthy food marketing. The Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) is responsible for the Children’s Television Standards, which cover TV advertising to children, contain many loopholes and rely on the general public to complain about breaches to this code. Without your complaints, there is no effective protection from inappropriate TV advertising.
A major problem is that the standards only apply during dedicated children’s programs, which are typically shown between 4:00pm and 4:30pm daily. Yet many children are watching TV up until 9:00pm.
When will the Government make a decision?
The Children’s Television Standards are currently under review, with the final regulations due to be released sometime in 2009. The review of the Children’s Television Standards commenced back in 2006.
To coincide with this review, the Coalition on Food Advertising to Children (CFAC) ran a postcard advocacy campaign to demonstrate community support for government regulations on unhealthy television food advertising to children. During this campaign, CFAC collected 20,521 signed postcards from members of the Australian community pledging their support towards this issue.
In August 2008, after a year of deliberations, ACMA released a draft of the revised Children’s Television Standards. Despite strong grassroots and public health support, only minor amendments were made in the draft Children’s Television Standards to better protect children from television food advertising. These draft standards propose a ban in the use of promotional characters and specify that premium offers (eg free toys) should be incidental to the food product being advertised. However, these restrictions apply only during dedicated children’s programs and not when most children are actually watching television.
The biggest disappointment with the draft of the revised standards was that the strong views of the community were ignored.
What needs to be done?
The Government must take action against unhealthy food advertising that is pervasive, manipulative and overwhelming by restricting unhealthy food marketing to children. This would make it easier for parents to develop healthy eating habits in their children.
The Government must place the rights of children and parents above commercial interests and develop and enforce meaningful regulations on unhealthy food marketing to children.
The Government still needs to address:
- Restricting unhealthy food advertising during TV broadcast periods when large numbers of children are watching (between 7am to 9am and 4pm to 9pm weekdays and 7am to 9pm on weekends)
- Ban the use of premium offers (e.g. free toys) to promote unhealthy food and drinks to children
- Ban the use of promotional characters (e.g. cartoons) to market unhealthy food and drinks to children
- Extending regulations beyond TV advertising to include other forms of food marketing to children, such as on the Internet, in children’s magazines and on food packages.
How can I be involved?
Write or email the Minister and your state senators here. Join The Parents Jury – parentsjury.org.au/ Subscribe to the Cancer Council NSW Junk Food Injunction Newsletter – email Bridget Kelly on bridgetk@nswcc.org.au
Who supports this campaign?
Coalition on Food Advertising to Children (CFAC)A group of key organisations and prominent individuals that recognise that the commercial promotion of food and beverages high in fat, sugar and salt to children is a significant threat to their nutrition and future health.
For more information visit www.cfac.net.au
Cancer Council
For more information visit www.cancercouncil.com.au
The Parents Jury
An online network of parents who are interested in improving the food and physical activity environments of Australian children
Click here for more information www.parentsjury.org.au
Choice
An independent consumer advocacy group. For more information visit www.choice.com.au
Public Health Advocacy Institute
An independent public health voice which promotes public health interest and action in priority areas such as child health.
Click here for more information www.phaiwa.org.au
Obesity Policy Coalition
The Obesity Policy Coalition (OPC) is a coalition of Diabetes Australia – VIC, Cancer Council VIC, Deakin University and VicHealth, that focuses on evidence-based policy and regulatory initiatives to reduce overweight and obesity.
Click here for more information www.opc.org.au
I.D.E.A.S.
This ad for the Coalition on Food Advertising to Children in Australia was developed by creative agency I.D.E.A.S.
Click here for more information www.ideascorp.com.au
