March 23rd, 2008
Food Industry Advertising Draws Fire From Children's Health Advocates
By Eric Pfanner
International Herald Tribune
PARIS: Gary Lineker, a former captain of the English soccer team, was known in his playing days for his ability to avoid the referee’s whistle.
So when a British marketing publication reported last week that Walkers had shown Lineker the red card that would end his 13-year role as the public face of that potato chip brand, it looked like a surprising coup for anti-obesity campaigners. They have long cried foul over the use of Lineker as a pitchman, saying his puckish smile encouraged children to eat more chips than they should.
Game over? Not quite.
PepsiCo, which owns Walkers, quickly disproved the report. Far from dropping Lineker from its ads, PepsiCo said, Walkers has recently signed him to another three-year contract.
The back and forth was typical of the debate over the marketing of products high in fat, sugar and salt. As a potentially crucial meeting of members of the World Health Organization draws near in May, anti-obesity groups and the food industry accuse each other of dealing in misinformation.
“You’ve got all the stakeholders in this debate putting out their stalls on this issue,” said Luke Upchurch, a spokesman in London for Consumers International, which represents more than 200 groups in countries around the world.
Along with the International Obesity Task Force, a group of health professionals, Consumers International this month proposed a “global code” to govern the marketing of food to children. Among the measures suggested were a ban on television and radio advertising of junk food from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The groups also want the Internet and other new media, like cellphones, to be free of ads for unhealthy foods at any time of the day or night. And they have called for an end to the use of toys, celebrity endorsements and cartoon characters to promote sugary cereals, soft drinks, potato chips and the like.
The proposal might seem ambitious in its international breadth. Even in Britain, where the rising rate of childhood obesity has become a favorite, if odd, topic of dinner table conversation, the food and advertising industries recently managed to quash proposals for a pre-9 p.m. ban on TV ads for junk food. Instead, the government said it planned a different kind of anti-obesity campaign, incorporating £75 million, or $150 million, in advertising.
A number of food companies have already said they would stop advertising unhealthy foods during television programs aimed at children under 12. While some of these pledges are global, they are mostly confined to Europe and North America.
The campaigners say international action is needed because some of the fastest increases in childhood obesity are occurring in developing countries.
“The code needs to be global,” Upchurch said. “It can’t be done in isolation.”
The food industry wasted no time in responding to the anti-obesity campaigners, accusing them of trying to hijack the agenda of the meeting of officials from the member nations of the World Health Organization.
“The consumer groups have no mandate to present this,” said Malte Lohan, a spokesman for the World Federation of Advertisers, which represents big food marketers.
People on the two sides of the debate say there is a great deal of uncertainty about what, if anything, will be decided about obesity at the World Health Assembly. At the meeting last year, members passed a resolution calling for recommendations on the marketing of foods high in fat, sugar and salt, as part of a broader plan to deal with noncommunicable diseases like obesity and alcoholism.
The agency is set to publish its proposal several weeks before the assembly, said Tim Armstrong, team leader for the global strategy on diet, physical activity and health at the organization. He declined to say what direction it might take but said it was unlikely to resemble the anti-obesity campaigners’ recommendations.
“There is nothing specific such as their code,” he said.