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| Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association,
15-July-2005, Vol 118 No 1218
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Challenging beliefs about the marketing of food
Robert Quigley, Carolyn Watts
The marketing of high fat-, salt-, sugar- and energy-dense
foods is now firmly in the gaze of parents, the community, and health
professionals as a vector (cause) of disease.
Maher et al1 have provided
a reminder to us all that the environment in which we live has significant
impacts on the obesity epidemic in New Zealand. In a small pilot study, the
authors have measured the amount and content of food advertisements, and types
of food available nearby to secondary schools. It is a simple and well-conceived
study that begins to map out the obesogenic environment of New
Zealand.
Maher et al step outside the current paradigm and rightly
look upstream at what determines our children’s health. We should not be
surprised by their results—because a walk around any neighbourhood will
show that our environment is sick. Our environment is not normal. We should not
be surprised that our children are growing fat when their world is saturated
with unhealthy messages. Put simply, we need to focus more on the causes of the
causes and less on the individual.
MarketingThe ‘marketing’ that our
children are exposed to is all-encompassing—and Maher et al have only
scratched the surface of what children are exposed to. Marketing long ago
stepped from the realm of providing information about products so that consumers
have information to make healthy choices, into a propaganda mode of selling
values, visions, and concepts—to which products are
aligned.2,3
The propaganda around fast food and soft drinks is that they
are ‘healthy choices’ which can be part of a ‘healthy
diet’—directly marketed by our nation’s elite
athletes.4 As
McDonald’s own marketing agency
has said, McDonald’s
Eat Smart Be Active campaign has
maintained low sales of the Salads Plus
menu, but has given parents (or ‘gatekeepers’ as they are called by
the marketers) the permission to eat at
McDonalds—with a subsequent rise
in sales of traditional burger-and-fries
products.2
Personal choiceIn election year, we are again
surrounded by the rhetoric of ‘individual choice’, as though this is
a panacea for all ills. However whether an individual chooses a healthy diet is
much more influenced by the availability, affordability, and accessibility of
food than that individual’s knowledge about healthy food choices. Choice
is important—but we argue that the right to choose a healthy diet has been
all but removed from children today. We live in a world where the saturation
marketing/propaganda of unhealthy food is the norm and environments support
unhealthy choices—and yet we continue to be surprised that we are in an
obesity epidemic.
Parental and personal responsibility are key agents in the
propaganda of food companies—if only people were educated about what a
healthy diet is and had better food labelling (for example), they’d be
empowered to make the healthy choice.
But honestly, what kind of choice are we offering our
children when:
Actually, commercialism directs their
life and yours.
Choice has been hijacked by marketers in a similar way with
statements such as ‘everything is OK in moderation’ and ‘eat a
balanced diet’. However, choice is not positive when the
‘choices’ being offered are not healthy choices. Interestingly, when
you look at the Ministry of Health’s recommendations there is no mention
of moderation or balance—the Ministry’s recommendations actually
make sense—‘eat less fatty, salty and sugary foods, eat more fruit
and vegetables, eat a variety of nutritious
foods’.6 Providing a choice of unhealthy
foods so that the diet is well balanced with junk does not equate to healthy
eating.
EvidenceAccording to the World Health
Organization, the heavy marketing of energy-dense foods and fast-food outlets is
a probable cause of obesity.7 This is backed up
by a systematic review of the evidence prepared for the British Office of
Communications that states ‘....the public will never find it credible
that an industry that spends huge sums each year advertising food to children on
television does so with no actual (or intended) effect on children’s food
consumption’.8
In the most comprehensive systematic review of evidence,
prepared for the British Food Standards Agency, the authors concluded that food
advertising can influence children’s food preferences, their purchase
behaviours and what they eat.9
SolutionsWe need to be much more radical than
just banning TV advertising of high fat, high salt, and sugar foods to children.
We need to be much more strategic and comprehensive.
Rather than focusing on advertising alone we need to broaden
our focus to unhealthy marketing as a whole by limiting the amount of promotion,
product development, sponsorship, placement, pricing, and advantageous
distribution of unhealthy options. Along with limiting unhealthy marketing, we
can also increase ‘healthy marketing’.
We acknowledge that banning TV advertising alone would be
spectacularly ineffective at reversing the obesity epidemic, but this should in
no way be read as a reason not to include it in a suite of interventions to
tackle obesity. The question is not whether we should ban TV advertising of junk
food to children, but what else should we do to create a healthy environment for
children, where healthy eating is experienced as the norm?
While the Government’s approach to preventing
childhood obesity is well directed (on paper at least through
Healthy Eating Healthy Action), it is
sadly under-resourced—both in staff and financial commitment. While there
are some components of the strategy that target environmental change, these are
too few given the significance of this area. We need to re-balance our efforts,
so that additional attention focuses on the causes of the causes rather than on
the individual. And we should be aware that the food and advertising industries
will resist such refocusing.
Health professionals must unite against the dominant
paradigms that are prevalent in our society. The health system must be
reoriented to focus a more significant proportion of its efforts to targeting
upstream determinants
If we do not take on this challenge, no-one else will; if we
do not advocate for healthy environments, no-one else will. And if we do not
believe that radical change is required, no-one else will!
Competing
interests: R Quigley and C Watts have
coauthored several scientific papers and published documents on what works to
prevent obesity and overweight, risk factors of the disease, and the obesogenic
environment. C Watts is chair of Agencies for Nutrition Action (ANA) and a
member of the NZ Dietetic Association. R Quigley is a member of the ANA
Scientific Advisory Committee and a member of the NZ Dietetic Association. The
authors’ views are their own and do not represent the organisations to
which they are
affiliated.
Author information:
Robert Quigley; Carolyn Watts; Directors, Quigley and Watts Ltd,
Wellington
Correspondence:
: Robert Quigley, Quigley and Watts Ltd,
PO Box 25-201, Wellington. Fax: (04) 472 0144; email: rob@quigleyandwatts.co.nz
References:
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