Unhealthy food marketing must be tackled, coalition says

Marketing that encourages children to consume unhealthy food and drink must be a central target in the national response to rising childhood obesity, a prevention campaigner has said.

Speaking during the IN FOCUS online programme on the impact of food marketing on children, Barbados Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition programme manager Francine Charles said consumers were not always making independent choices but were influenced by sophisticated advertising designed to create demand for particular products.

Deputy Nutrition Officer at the Ministry of Health’s National Nutrition Centre Brian Payne

She said: “My background is more in communications and media and marketing and advertising, and so I always laugh when people talk about making a choice. You’re not making a choice.”

Charles said companies were able to advertise products in ways that made consumers feel they needed to purchase them, adding that repeated consumption could contribute to overweight and obesity.

Barbados Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition programme manager Francine Charles

“We have to be aware that we are being programmed through advertising to choose certain things,” she said, pointing to research into how foods are produced to create particular textures and tastes that encourage repeated consumption.

Charles also underscored the vulnerability of young children to marketing, noting that the coalition recently held a youth summit with about 52 secondary school students to teach them about marketing tactics.

“Some of them said: ‘Oh my gosh, they didn’t realise.’” she said, explaining that children under ten often lack the ability to distinguish between truth, opinion and advertising messages. “When that marketing happens to them that early, they actually believe that this is it, and then they build brand loyalty.”

The cost of healthy food was another major issue requiring attention from policymakers, civil society and the private sector, said Charles.

Healthy Caribbean Coalition social media manager and communication officer Sheena Edwards

She pointed to research which showed that while parents could spend about 20 per cent of their food expenditure on providing enough calories for their children, eating healthily could account for as much as 90 per cent of food expenditure.

“We have a lot of work that we need to do,” she said, noting that civil society plans to launch an aggressive campaign from September calling for healthier foods to be made more affordable.

Healthy Caribbean Coalition social media manager and communication officer Sheena Edwards said children were being exposed to aggressive marketing of sugary drinks and salty and sugary snacks.

“We do daily monitoring of the marketing and advertising in school settings, online, and on social media,” Edwards said. “It is aggressive marketing of sugar-sweetened beverages, it’s aggressive marketing of salty and sugary snacks every day, all day.”

She also pointed to reduced physical activity among children as another factor contributing to the problem.

Deputy Nutrition Officer at the Ministry of Health’s National Nutrition Centre Brian Payne said food marketing was a public health matter, noting that taste preferences develop from an early age.

“When we expose our children to high sugar, high salt, ultra-processed foods, fast foods, etc., they develop that taste preference from very early and oftentimes they are hooked on these foods for life,” he said.

Payne said the ministry was shifting away from placing emphasis solely on individual responsibility and was instead focusing on changing the wider food environment.

“Unless the food environment changes, and of course marketing tends to be a key part of it, unless the food environment changes, it’s going to be very difficult.”

(SB)