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Junk food ad regulation a ‘charade’ says Obesity Policy Coalition report calling for action

Coco Pops monkeySelf-regulation of food advertising is failing with regulators accused of quietly softening rules around junk food advertising, a new report from the Obesity Policy Coalition has claimed.

And the OPC has called on the Australian Communications and Media Authority to increase its monitoring of food advertising and how it is targeted at children.

The report, End the Charade, says that rules surrounding advertising to children have been softened by the Australian Association of National Advertisers since the OPC conducted an initial investigation in 2012.

OPC executive manager, Jane Martin, said the industry was rife with examples of how the barriers to advertising high sugar foods to children had been shifted such as in the case of Coco Pops which had been classed as a “healthier” dietary choice and therefore be able to be marketed to children.

“The thing with these changes is they are not open to public scrutiny,” Martin told Mumbrella.

“The industry has been given the opportunity to self-regulate, but it is totally failing kids.

“There is a loophole in the definition now and it is not ‘healthy’ foods, it is ‘healthier’ foods.

Included in the report were a number of examples where the OPC said marketers were being able to take aim at children.

These included : “A weakened interpretation of advertising ‘directly targeted to children’ allowing Nestle to use fairy tale imagery to advertise Wonka Cookie Creamery chocolate, arguing it was ‘designed to appeal to an adult’s sense of nostalgia for childhood’.”

It also said the complaints process remained too slow.

“Complex, slow system that failed to consider a complaint for Peter’s ‘Zombie Guts’ and ‘Zombie Snot’ icy-poles because the ad campaign had ended by the time the complaint reached the Advertising Standards Board,” it said.

Martin said marketers were being given too much control.

“Despite strong growing evidence of the powerful influence food advertising can have on children’s diets, Australia’s already weak system for protecting children from unhealthy food marketing has gone backwards,” she said.

The OPC said as a first step the federal government should “introduce comprehensive regulations or, at the very least, direct broadcasting, advertising and food industries on how to strengthen their existing approaches”.

Simon Canning

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