Blog - Protecting Children from Obesity - It just doesn't Add up!

Barking and Dagenham has an increasingly worrying problem with childhood Obesity. It is not a new problem, but one that continues to pose a serious public health risk for the borough. This Blog looks at the impact the advertising industry has on influencing children and parents, againist the backdrop of a new Government initiative to regulate the industry.

Read more about the Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham perspective here; 

Protecting Children from Obesity – It Just Doesn’t Ad Up

Obesity in children has been and continues to be, a poor representation of health outcomes in Barking and Dagenham.

The Health and Wellbeing Board Healthy Weight Strategy 2016-20 laid bare the problem:

“One in four reception children and one in three year six children are overweight or obese. This prevalence sets Barking and Dagenham as the 5th highest prevalence of excess weight in reception (26.6 percent) in London, above the London and National prevalence of 23 percent and 22.5 percent respectively. Barking and Dagenham also has the 3rd highest prevalence of excess weight in year six (42.2 percent) in London, above the London and National prevalence of 37.6 percent and 33.5 percent respectively.”

It’s a stark reality check for the scale of the problem in the borough and with the emergence of the COVID pandemic and subsequent “lockdowns” from March 2020 – the scale of the problem is likely to have become much worse.

Fast food outlets with their ‘quick fix’ available in the vicinity of where young people hang out and busy parents going about their daily business, could contribute to the problem…but how does it get to that – what is it that lurks in the shadows goading and influencing people to seek out ‘the fix”?

The UK Government has recently announced plans to significantly restrict online advertising of less healthy food and drinks. A ban on some adverts for certain foods high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) will be brought in by the end of 2022. This is a long-awaited policy change for doctors, experts and heath organisations, given that the exposure to junk food marketing influences what and how much children eat.

Yet in the face of this, some sectors of the food and advertising industries have launched a public and private lobbying campaign that seeks to undermine these plans. The flood of junk food advertising does nothing to protect children. Essentially they are proposing to put in place weak rules that allow companies to break them, while In the meantime, according to Bite Back, children under 16 are being exposed to the tune of 15 billion junk food adverts every year! Meanwhile, the ad industry wants to build on an existing, self-regulated system that’s flawed and unfit for purpose. This proposed approach says a lot about the effectiveness of a self-regulation approach – which leaves the advertising industry to set and mark its own homework; something it’s been doing so shoddily for years, even to the lax standards they set.

One in three children now leave primary school with a weight classed as overweight or obese. While food marketing is one of a number of factors that drive excess weight, restricting what advertising can be shown is more equitable and could bring benefits to adverts and children and free up space for healthier products to be advertised.

Despite the industry’s protestations, this ban is only a baseline. Lots of marketing will continue – whether it’s brand marketing, or sports sponsorship, for example. When it comes to protecting children from junk food adverts online, the foxes have been in charge of the chicken coop for too long.

From a Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham perspective, there needs to be robust new regulations that work. For children and their families, and the local health economy in Barking and Dagenham, these measures can be a crucial step to addressing a very concerning, burgeoning issue for the borough.

Author: Richard Vann, Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham