Children Vs. Obesity: Ban Ads Or Tax Junk Food?

Recent research has shown that British (and American) children are getting fatter, suggested there is a link between childhood obesity and a slew of adult ailments, and revealed that 95% of food ads aimed at children promote brands that contain unhealthy levels of fat, salt and sugar.

Therefore, argue a number of food lobbying groups, by restricting unhealthy foods advertising to children we will reduce their consumption and thus improve the health of future generations.

Heady stuff. Charlie Powell from Sustain, an alliance of campaigners for better food, claims: “Advertising is designed to exploit children’s vulnerabilities.” Meanwhile, Kath Dalmeny from the Food Commission says: “Junk food advertisers know that children are especially susceptible to marketing messages. They target children as young as two with toys, cartoon characters, gimmicky packaging and interactive web sites to ensure they pester their parents for the products.”

Darren Neville, editor of Consumer Policy Review, claims that children are “bombarded with marketing and advertising for what are often unhealthy foods”.

We should take these arguments with a large pinch of (metaphorical) salt.

Children aren’t quite as “susceptible” as the critics suggest. I should know. I spent six months of my marketing PhD in schools studying children’s reactions to advertising. Children are the classic ‘active audience’.

They are advertising-literate. They appraise critically, reject and play with commercial messages in all kinds of unintended and resistant ways.

While consumer groups worry about what advertising does to children, my research suggests turning this question on its head and asking instead what children do with advertising. The only vulnerable thing I observed in my research were the ads, which were generally lambasted, rejected, and pitied by an audience vastly more discerning than their image in the media.

The second flaw in the argument is that advertising is really not that powerful. For decades the scientific study of consumer behavior has shown conclusively that while advertising can encourage trial of products and occasionally facilitate a switch in brand preference, it does so within pre-existing levels of demand.

Advertising rarely creates demand; rather, it channels it from one brand to another. Dr Brian Young, a noted child psychologist, concludes: “There is no serious and methodologically sound evidence that shows that food advertising leads to an increase in the consumption by children of whole categories of food.”

Advertising is the most visible instrument of both marketing and capitalism, but this does not mean that it is the most powerful. It may be time for the food lobby to accept that a ‘tax’ on products with unhealthy ingredients is the only effective course of action. As any marketer knows, the only way to get someone to buy more (or, in this case, less) is to use price promotions. Ads or no ads, children will always want to eat unhealthy foods. An effective ‘fat tax’ would ensure that while the desire might always be there, the propensity to buy is not.

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