Junk food advertising a 'major contributor' to obesity

Advertising of junk food is a “major contributor” to the diseases sending New Zealanders to an early grave, the Ministry of Health says. 

Documents obtained under the Official Information Act for RNZ’s investigation Off the Shelf: The Quiet Struggle to Stop us Eating Ourselves Sick show health officials want much stricter rules for food advertising. 

“Advertising of unhealthy food and beverages is a major contributor to obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, oral disease, neurological disease and other non-communicable diseases,” the Ministry of Health says.

“Collectively these conditions are responsible for most health loss, and the bulk of ethnic inequities in life expectancy in Aotearoa New Zealand.”  

The comments are part of a Ministry of Health submission to the Advertising Standards Authority, which is setting new guidelines for food and drink marketing and advertising to children. 

The submission also reveals health officials are concerned about the use of digital tracking to market unhealthy food to children and says the ASA’s proposed guidelines don’t protect children from being targeted. 

“Rules around data collection from children are not adequate in the environment of digital marketing. These guidelines are vague and do not provide guidance as to what this personal information should or should not include,” the ministry’s submission says.

“Social responsibility should include not using children’s personal information to target advertising to them, which is how social media marketing tools work, especially advertising of products and/or activities that may be harmful to a children’s health.”

The Ministry of Health wants the new ASA codes to ban digital tracking to target children, which it says is common on the websites of popular food and drink brands.

“Half these websites offered children the opportunity to register and become a member or enter in a promotion, with only 13% containing information for parents related to registrations and accounts.”

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Lindsay Mouat, chief executive of the Association of New Zealand Advertisers and a member of the ASA’s governance board, said he had spoken to food manufacturers about this issue. 

“They certainly tell me that there is nothing in their apps that is retrieving or saving information from kids,” he said.

“My understanding is that ‘occasional’ food and beverage companies aren't targeting children - they're targeting parents or adults.”

He said Meta and Google did not allow interest-based targeting - tailoring ads to the interests of users - to under-18s and YouTube deactivated personalised ads and collection of personal data on children’s content. 

“I totally get what the MOH are asking for. I'm not convinced that that is not already in place.”

Mouat questioned the extent to which advertising of unhealthy food contributed to obesity.

“If advertising is the problem then why are the obesity rates higher in New Zealand than equivalent countries,” he asked. “Why are those rates higher than Australia for example, when they are seeing exactly the same products being marketed?”

Tighter junk food marketing rules

New Zealand has the second highest rate of child obesity in the developed world and is the third highest for adult obesity. 

The Ministry of Health believes advertising is a key part of the problem and that the ASA, a voluntary regime where the industry regulates itself, is a flawed model. 

“Voluntary codes are not effective at protecting children and young people from the marketing of unhealthy products,” it says, in a briefing to ministers in April, signed off by Deputy Director-General of Health Andrew Old.

The briefing says: “Advertising high fat, salt and sugary food to children is widespread with children in one New Zealand study seeing around 27 advertisements for unhealthy foods and drinks per day.”

It says children in poor areas see more junk food advertising as there are three times as many fast-food outlets per 10,000 people in those communities, compared to affluent areas.

The ASA’s new guidelines for advertisers - currently out for consultation and set to be finalised next month - do set stricter rules for marketing junk food to children. 

One proposal is to limit sponsorship advertising by brands associated with junk food. 

“The brand’s name or logo must not be on promotional material distributed to children or on any child-sized clothing,” the draft ASA guidelines say. 

But the Food and Grocery Council (FGC), representing food manufacturers and suppliers who generate $40 billion in the domestic market and employ one-in-five of the country’s workforce, is fighting the change. 

“We are strongly opposed to the prohibition on brand names and logos not being featured on promotional material and child sized clothing,” it said in a submission to the ASA.

Brand advertising is where the company’s brand, name and logo is used rather than the company’s products.   

The FGC warns the new code could sink major community events. 

“Coca-Cola may no longer put on the Coca-Cola Christmas in the Park, the biggest and most popular free event in the Southern Hemisphere, and one which raises significant money for charity. This is a real-world consequence of the proposed changes.”

The New Zealand Beverage Council, the industry association representing 75% of the non-alcoholic beverage sector, also opposes the change.

“It appears to prohibit any sponsorship advertisement from including product placement, regardless of the target audience of the advertising,” the NZBC submission to the ASA says. 

“Such a prohibition would deprive sports teams (both at the elite and grassroots level) and sporting events of a critical revenue stream. Community and cultural events that rely on similar funding would also be at risk.”

Sport and junk food 'make very poor bedfellows'

The food industry is heavily invested in sponsorship of children’s sport. 

A 2020 study of 408 children’s football, basketball, netball and rugby clubs found 28 percent had food or drink sponsorship - often from fast food companies.  

Professor Louise Signal, Director of the Health Promotion and Policy Research Unit at the University of Otago, said it was “ridiculous” to link sport and junk food.  

“What you have is healthy sports and unhealthy products. They make very poor bedfellows in my view.”

Signal, whose key research areas include obesity prevention, said that letting the advertising industry regulate itself was failing. 

“Food marketing is one of the most important sectors that we need to address in terms of the outrageous rates of child obesity in New Zealand,” she said. “The Advertising Standards Authority is a failed system. We cannot have industry regulation of marketing.”

But ASA chief executive Hilary Souter said the authority had operated effectively for more than 50 years. 

If a complaint was upheld, the ASA asked for the ad to be taken down. While the ASA had no power to issue fines, Souter said the compliance rate was 96% and the impact on advertisers was considerable.

“The ad may have cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and it's no longer able to be part of their marketing collateral.”

The ASA released all its decisions which could mean negative publicity for advertisers falling foul of the codes.

“There aren't many advertisers that I've come across who want to be known as misleading the public in relation to their claims or to be seen as taking an irresponsible attitude.”