From Tony the Tiger to Scooby Doo, popular kids characters are playing a starring role in an unexpected story: a growing number of ads peddling often-unhealthy food to young Canadians, new research suggests.
Seven years ago, nearly 20 top food manufacturers joined a voluntary program designed to curb the promotion of unhealthy eating to children, considered a key factor in Canada’s rampant obesity problem.
Some advertisers have made significant strides, but overall they are now actually targeting more commercials at children and teenagers on youth TV networks than before, the study concluded. And they are making greater use of both the brands’ own “spokes-characters” and beloved figures from children’s TV and movies, shown by other research to be powerful pitchmen.
About half the food advertised was rated by the study as nutritionally lacking — no better than in 2006.
The findings indicate that self-regulation of the industry has failed, and it is time for government to ban youth-focused food commercials, the researchers argue in the journal Obesity.
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“I know lots of people say ‘Regulation — it’s the whole nanny state.’ But to me, it’s a way to support parents,” said Monique Potvin Kent, the University of Ottawa adjunct professor of health sciences who led the study.
“All parents are trying to do is feed their kids healthily. By having marketing regulations, you’re actually helping parents raise their kids and make the choices, as opposed to industry making the choices.”
A food-sector group questions the findings of the research, however, and says companies are, in fact, making important advances, with advertising of gum, candy and soda pop to young children all but eliminated. Other products have been reformulated with less sugar or calories, said Janet Feasby, a vice-president of Advertising Standards Canada (ASC), which oversees the program.
Kellogg's“Spokes-characters” have been shown to be powerful pitchmen for food brands.
“We have noticed there has been a real change in what’s being advertised to kids,” she said. “It has resulted in significant changes and improvements in the type of foods.”
Ms. Feasby also stressed that the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative launched in 2007 addressed programming and ads geared toward children under 12. Ms. Kent’s study looks at a broader age group, and at nighttime programming for older people, she said. The kind of regulation it recommends could lead to absurd situations where, for instance, beer advertising is banned on Hockey Night in Canada, a show watched by many children as well as adults, said Ms. Feasby.
Regardless, it seems the federal government has little interest in intervening.
Health Canada will review the new study, but recognizes that the food industry is trying to reduce advertising of unhealthy foods voluntarily, and encourages the sector to strengthen its approach, said Gary Holub, a department spokesman.
No one questions that childhood weight gain is a pressing issue, with rates of obesity tripling from 1981 to 2013, and two major reviews of previous studies concluded that marketing of food contributes to the problem.
Ms. Kent and her colleagues looked at a month of data provided by Nielsen Media Research for several categories of food advertising on two highly watched children’s TV channels – in May 2006, before the advertising initiative started, and in May 2011. Using a system developed by the U.K. Food Standards Agency, they rated each product as “less healthy” or “healthier.”
The total number of food ads by companies in the initiative actually declined 24%, and some firms made “fabulous” changes, acknowledged Ms Kent. Coca-Cola and McCain Foods, for instance, had no commercials on the channels, while ads for chocolate bars were way down.
Overall, however, the number of spots judged by the researchers to be targeted at children under 12 remained just as high, while those jointly aimed at children and teenagers almost doubled in volume. And average nutritional quality did not change.
The use by initiative members of brand spokes-characters — like Cap’n Crunch or Snap Crackle and Pop — jumped by 27%, and of licensed characters — from Spider-Man to Super Mario — by 150%. And more of those characters were promoting less-healthy foods than in 2006, the research indicates.
Earlier studies have suggested that employing well-liked characters can influence children’s food preferences.
“It kind of sweetens the deal for the child, it just makes that product more appealing,” said Ms. Kent.
There is some precedent, meanwhile, for banning child food ads altogether. Quebec prohibited any advertising to children under 12 in the 1980s, while the U.K. instituted a ban on children’s food advertising in 2008.
Such a rule would only eliminate the advantage that sophisticated marketers enjoy over children, insisted Yoni Freedhoff, an Ottawa doctor who focuses on obesity.
“I have three little kids and they’re pretty savvy, but I wouldn’t pit any of them against Don Draper,” he said, referring to the Mad Men ad-executive character. “That is not the fight I would want our children to be forced to have on a regular basis.”
National Post
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