![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.foodnavigator-asia.com\/var\/plain_site\/storage\/images\/publications\/food-beverage-nutrition\/foodnavigator-asia.com\/policy\/academics-call-for-ban-on-child-facing-junk-food-advertising\/8762330-1-eng-GB\/Academics-call-for-ban-on-child-facing-junk-food-advertising_strict_xxl.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/div>\nRelated tags:\u00a0New Zealand<\/a>,\u00a0Junk food<\/a>,\u00a0Obesity<\/a>,\u00a0Advertising<\/a>,\u00a0Research<\/a><\/p>\n Related topics:\u00a0Asian tastes<\/a>,\u00a0Policy<\/a>,\u00a0Convenience foods and snacks<\/a>,\u00a0Australia – New Zealand<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A ban on manipulative junk food advertising to children is urgently needed to help fight increasing rates of childhood obesity, say University of Otago Wellington researchers.<\/p>\n Free toys, gifts, discounts and competitions, promotional characters and celebrities, and appeals to taste and fun, are just some of the techniques used by marketers to promote junk food to kids, according to a recent systematic literature review.<\/p>\n The university\u2019s Department of Public Health has for some time been on a drive to research the causes of obesity in a country where the obesity rate among children aged between five and 11 jumped from 8% to 11% in just six years. At least 20% of New Zealand’s children are considered overweight.<\/p>\n From Happy Meals to \u2018open happiness\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n Lead researcher Gabrielle Jenkin says most children and parents will be familiar with the offer of free toys at McDonalds, slogans such as \u201copen happiness<\/i>\u201d with Coke, and the use of licensed characters such as Spiderman or Spongebob Squarepants to promote junk food to children.<\/p>\n Persuasive food marketing is manipulative, especially for children, Jenkin said, adding: \u201cSuch marketing has been proven to increase children\u2019s requests for the advertised foods, their food preferences and ultimately their diets. For example, free toys, discounts and competitions promote brand loyalty and repeat purchases.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Jenkin\u2019s colleague at UOW\u2019s Department of Public Health, Louise Signal, has been researching the extent of junk food advertising on kids by equipping 200 schoolchildren with wearable cameras and recording the instances they come in contact with advertising from billboards, shops and the back of buses.<\/p>\n “<\/span>Children tell us that they do see a lot of advertising, but we’ve never quantified it across the entire range of media<\/i>,\u201d said Signal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “As a parent myself, I’m very interested because parents aren’t with their older children all of the time, they don’t necessarily know where they go, and a lot of it slides under the radar anyway<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n Bringing legislation in line with other countries<\/b><\/p>\n Jenkin and her review team are now calling for an outright ban on junk food advertising to children under 16, as has been done in Norway.<\/p>\n In the absence of a ban, new rules would need to be added to the advertising codes around the use of persuasive techniques, as has been done in the UK, Australian and Ireland, they say.<\/p>\n The study claims to be the first of its kind to focus on common techniques used to promote food to children on television. The research has been published in the latest edition of the international journal,\u00a0Obesity Reviews<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" http:\/\/www.foodnavigator-asia.com\/Policy\/Academics-call-for-ban-on-child-facing-junk-food-advertising\/ Academics call for ban on child-facing junk food advertising Post a commentBy RJ Whitehead\u00a0, 10-Feb-2014 Related tags:\u00a0New Zealand,\u00a0Junk food,\u00a0Obesity,\u00a0Advertising,\u00a0Research Related topics:\u00a0Asian tastes,\u00a0Policy,\u00a0Convenience foods and snacks,\u00a0Australia – New Zealand A ban on manipulative junk food advertising to children is urgently needed to help fight increasing rates of childhood obesity, say University of Otago Wellington … Continue reading Ban on junk food advertising to chindren<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,22,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthy-habits","category-nutrition","category-policy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}RELATED NEWS:<\/span><\/h4>\n
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