Food

The growing and seemingly intractable social problem of obesity, particularly in children, is resulting in calls for ever more intervention by government. Pressure has been applied by well-funded health and so-called consumer organisations – often with an anti-food or anti-business ethos. Ministers and regulators have been subsequently persuaded to search for policies they hope might help them halt the rising numbers of overweight children.  

Food advertising has become an easy target for the single-issue campaigners who want to see action. Despite the evidence showing little relationship between the food ads children see and the foods they choose, the campaigners have called for greater restrictions – often it seems they think that because something, even if of questionable value, can be done it must be done.   

In early 2007, the broadcasting regulator Ofcom restricted the television advertising to children of food that is high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS). The ban was extended across the non-broadcast media and then to radio. ISBA said at the time that advertisers are as concerned as anyone else to help find a solution to the problem but that an advertising ban will not help make children thinner. We said that evidence shows other factors such as exercise and parental influence are far more important.  

This evidence-based approach is the one we carry through into all our campaigning; for example, when ISBA and the Advertising Association took the lead in raising serious questions over the academic and scientific soundness of the Hastings report. We also directly inputted into the debate generated by the Buckingham inquiry into the commercialisation of childhood - the result was that Professor Buckingham produced a report that was fairer and more balanced. 

ISBA is a founding member of both MediaSmart and the Advertising Education Forum – crucial industry bodies which have made a long term commitment to address the needs of children, parents and policymakers in a balanced way. The result has been a widespread acceptance that advertisers are playing a positive role in addressing social concerns. 

And we built on this over 2009 through the work of the industry initiative Business4Life which, again, has ensured that advertising is seen as a means of addressing concerns rather than causing them.