Banning junk food advertising to children is pivotal to an effective national obesity strategy and the Green’s bill to implement a ban deserves bipartisan support, Cancer Council Australia said today (4/9).
Cancer Council Australia Chief Executive Officer, Professor Ian Olver, said the Greens showed commendable leadership in tabling the bill. Advertising restrictions combined with other measures were the most effective strategy to address the childhood obesity crisis.
“Resistance to junk food advertising reform is largely based on claims that there is no credible evidence showing restrictions would reduce obesity,” Professor Olver said. “Yet the most rigorous studies and modelling available show that restricting children’s exposure to junk food ads is pivotal to addressing childhood obesity.
“It is also indisputable that companies who market unhealthy food are injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into TV advertising during children’s viewing times. There is only one reason they do this, because it works.
“If we wait for the level of evidence being sought by sceptics and those with a commercial stake in junk food consumption, the obesity crisis will impact increasingly on all Australians – either through a personal or family experience of obesity-related illness or through increasing health system costs borne by the taxpayer.”
Professor Olver said the Whitlam and Fraser governments had introduced broadcast ad bans on tobacco products well before the level of evidence now being sought by food industry interests was available.
“Hindsight shows that banning broadcast tobacco advertising led to a significant drop in tobacco consumption, because it helped to de-normalise smoking. It also meant that health messages were not competing with big-budget TV and radio campaigns by the tobacco companies,” he said.
“Advertising reform helped save thousands of lives. It is unacceptable to think that in years to come we may look back on a lost opportunity to prevent deaths from obesity-related disease - because the major parties rejected junk food ad bans.”