Childhood Obesity Impacted by Marketing

Children can be easily influenced by what they see in the media. Often times, food is being directly marketed to children because advertisers know that kids want what they see on television. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for food marketing curbs in an effort to fight the growing childhood obesity epidemic, according to a recent article from Reuters written by Jonathan Lynn.

The government will have to work together with the advertising industry to restrict advertising of foods high in salt, sugar and dangerous fats targeted at children to tackle an epidemic of obesity and other diseases, according to health officials.

This call for marketing adjustments is part of a focus on combating non-communicable diseases, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease and lung disease. These diseases are contributing to the growing number of premature deaths in the United States.

Dr. Timothy Armstrong, who is head of the WHO's efforts on promoting healthy diet and physical education, said that non-communicable diseases now account for 90 percent of premature deaths in low- and middle-income countries, where obesity is also a growing concern.

Of the 42 million children worldwide 5 years old or younger who are overweight or obese, 35 million are located in poor countries.

Most advertising tends to focus on junk foods high in calories, sugar, and fat. These ads also tend to target children and encourage them to consume these foods. The WHO believes that advertising could instead promote a healthy diet, which would in turn combat childhood obesity.

WHO officials have already consulted with some of the leading companies in the sector to discuss marketing efforts, including Coca-Cola, Mexico's Grupo Bimbo, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft, McDonald's, Mars, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever and the World Federation of Advertisers. These companies have already agreed to draw up a code of conduct and are committed to not marketing unhealthy food products to children under the age of 12.

Armstrong says that it has now become the government's responsibility to step in and make a change to these advertising efforts. It will be interesting to see how advertising is impacted by this. As of right now, it seems that every other commercial is for junk food and many of those commercials are targeted right at young people. Since young people are so easily influenced, it is a step in the right direction to have the WHO step in. Of course, parents can also influence what their children watch on television and how much of it, but sometimes the media is literally everywhere.

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