Australians oppose TV junk food ads
- This article was originally published on The Conversation
More than 75% of Australians support a ban on junk food advertising in children’s television, and almost 20% support a total ban, according to a poll by the Australian National University on attitudes to food security.
The survey of 1200 people also found that nearly 50% of Australians feel genetically modified (GM) foods are safe to eat, and 13% say they struggle to put regular, nutritionally-balanced food on their tables.
The poll, Public Opinion on Food Security and Related Food Issues, gauged views on household food security, eating out habits, health and food safety and GM crops. The results describe a nation that is increasingly opting to eat out rather than cook at home, and one that is concerned about the safety of imported food products but divided about GM foods.
Stewart Lockie, Head of the School of Sociology in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at ANU and lead author of the study, said one of the surprising findings was that the increase in the number of people eating out was driven by time poverty and not socio-economic status. Eight percent of people said they eat takeaway food more than three times a week.
“1,200 people were interviewed … with a response rate of 40.5 per cent.”
That already weights the results to the nanny state-conditioned opinionistas. The rest are too busy feeding kids to be bothered with marketing survey companies ringing up at 7p.m. I should know. I have three kids and two marketing companies called me last night.
77%?
Now, let me see. No food is bad within a balanced diet. The researchers are well aware of this, even if they won’t admit it.
Therefore, they would – being scrupulously fair researchers – be careful not to push-poll the results by using emotive language in the question. Wouldn’t they?
So the word ‘junk’ would not have appeared in the question, would it?
I’m not even going to check.
An interesting insight I gleaned from a couple of parents recently was that their kids enjoy Macca’s kids meals enormously.
They love the toys and box it comes in. However, one parent’s child barely touches the food or drink – more for mum. The other only likes the apple juice as they normally don’t get it at home.
We hit upon the obvious idea of taking a couple of the boxes home, filling them with normal food and a toy and eliminating the trudge to a Maccas.
But back to the point, yes we should probably ban all food ads to save the idiots and their spoilt, fat little kids from themselves. An ad campaign highlighting the benefits of a balanced diet and so improving awareness and personal choice, would clearly not be beneficial. Oh.
Paul, you’re right.
Pasted directly from the paper, the question is ‘Would you support or oppose a ban on advertising junk food during children’s programming?’
But also asserts that the predominant group of takeaway eaters are young affluent males (wow, really?!)
But we should still ban the ads as “it’s actually allowing [parents] to take responsibility.” – are they for real? This smacks of research to support a foregone conclusion.
What a schmozzle. How does such dross get past the ethics committee?
I smell the Cancer Council in this somewhere.
*** Paging John Grono ***
Gentlemen, you are doing such a good job of finding the faults so far I daren’t spoil your fun.
It reminds me of a lecture conducted by one of my statistics professors at university – Professor John Croucher. The (para-phrased) message of the lecture was “You tell me the answer you want, and I can construct the questionnaire to do that”. Clearly someone else was at that lecture and took it at face value.
Society would be a better place, as would the nations health bill (now and in the future) if we could reduce the consumption of junk food. – You do not need a survey when stating the obvious do you?
Ban it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!