http://www.optusnet.com.au/news/story/abc/20060905/16/business/1733597.inp

I don't generally like censorship and this seems like a drastic step to take. But obesity is now at epidemic level and getting worse. Surely the health of our children [and of our health service] is more important than the bottom line of the modern equivalent of snake oil salesmen.

Agreed. No problems bringing in legislation against smoking and alcohol but apparently our legislators cannot do the same here - which apparently will have far greater economic fallout.

There are a lot of problems with the processed food industry. To buy unprocessed home brand bulk food such as oats, lentils, flax etc. you have to search aisles of processed fluff that contains enough sugar, salt, palm oil etc to be harmful. To take Kellogg’s as an example they produce what they call a health food as it contains some percentage of the daily requirement of some obscure vitamin. The supermarket shelves are full of this rubbish as part of the marketing game is to saturate the readily accessible shelves with their product. The unprocessed healthier and cheaper products are placed at foot level or some other difficult to access spot. The companies on my avoid at all cost list are Kellogg’s, Nestles, Kraft, Arnott’s and all the others that make this processed, high calorie rubbish.

I won't buy Kraft products anyway. Kraft's parent company is Philip Morris. Have a look at:
http://www.newstarget.com/002362.html

"And Kraft Foods, of course, is the company that manufactures some of the most popular food products -- such as Oreo cookies and Velveeta cheese food -- that, like cigarettes, are manufactured with ingredients now well known to be associated with various health problems in humans."

And Kraft uses the same marketing consultants as its tobacco parent company to convince kids to eat more and more Oreo cookies.

What puzzles me about all you wonderful people looking after my welfare is why you have a thing about advertising.

I could understand (although not necessarily support) a campaign to ban junk foods from our supermarkets. That has three effects:

1. If successful, it would remove the root cause of the problem, rather than just one of its many symptoms

2. It puts a stake in the ground as to the level of importance the issue actually has - e.g., would you make it party policy? if not, why not?

3. It would force everyone involved to stop whingeing in generalities (it is bad for us) and be specific about what is bad for us how it is bad for us, and why we should be deprived of it

Tinkering around the edges of a problem like this is easy. All you have to do is wind yourself up to the heights of do-goodership and pontificate about how nasty advertisers are forcing people against their will to devour stuff that is poisoning them.

If the products concerned are illegal, it should be illegal to advertise them. If they are legal, there should be absolutely no reason to place a ban on advertising them.

If what Peracles says is right about the safe food being legal, toxic food not being illegal, then we are not talking about prohibition.

The companies have the choice to change their recipes, and the Government that represents common people, has the right to insist on standards. What we are looking at for real change is regulation. This does not have to be so draconian, but rather in cooperation with the companies to ensure healthy food is kept to a standard...

Banning advertising looks like taking away more freedom of speech, or prohibition. At the same time, the advertisers need regulation making them accountable to tell the truth.

Companies have a right to profit. Advertisers have a right to profit too. Consumers also have a right to the truth so that they can make real choices. We don't have enough of these standards in Australia.

I agree with Pericles, if its legal, advertise it, that's they way the world works as it should be.

The only way to combat junk food, is introduce proper food standards supporting only food without additives, dairies and preservatives or chemicals. It would increase farming, introduce more fresh food restaurants and takeaways, instead of microwaved deep fried poison food. It would destroy multinational food monopolies, opening up many more small businesses, a very good idea. It would promote employment, as all food would mostly have to be grown in our country to classify as fresh and be prepared in house.

Pity that will never happen, but there's more money in factory created junk food and sympathetic medicine for the elite, than in fresh grown non toxic illness free eating habits and preparation.

But who wants sanity in the world, let's just make scratches in the sand of our wants, then watch them wash away with the tide. Whilst we have another bite.

We are getting into some surprisingly fertile territory here.

saintfletcher says:

>>Banning advertising looks like taking away more freedom of speech, or prohibition. At the same time, the advertisers need regulation making them accountable to tell the truth.<<

If we as a society believe that advertisers should be legally obliged to tell the truth, why is it not with even greater vehemence that we demand that our politicians be held to the same standard?

Of the two, it is the politician that has the greater effect on our society.

Yet we treat them and their utterances in much the same way as we treat the advertising industry: we are constantly exposed to their messages, can parrot one or two of the more memorable catch phrases and recall their facile sound-bites, but we are fundamentally cynical about their relationship with the truth.

And now comes the suggestion that of the two it should be the advertiser who is taken to court to justify the veracity of the claims made for their product.

Rather than take aim at an industry that merely makes money out of exaggeration, hyperbole and a flirtation with the outer edges of veracity, should we not target those whose actions directly affect our lives, liberties and security?

Pericles

"Rather than take aim at an industry that merely makes money out of exaggeration, hyperbole and a flirtation with the outer edges of veracity, should we not target those whose actions directly affect our lives, liberties and security?"

Apparently that's what we get to do at election time.

I'm glad you said "apparently", scout.

>>Apparently that's what we get to do at election time.<<

At election time, we are asked to choose between two political parties, neither of which is obliged to a) tell the truth, b) actually perform the acts they represent to us that they will perform once elected or c) be measured in any way on the performance of their duties, in a way that would allow us to pay them an amount commensurate with that performance.

Every time, we are asked to buy a pig in a poke, sight unseen, by signing a blank cheque.

How can that be less damaging to our health, safety and well being than a few advertisments?

What makes you think that I may be concerned about your welfare, Pericles? As you are [presumably] an adult Australian, you are legally entitled to do a number of things which some younger Australians are not entitled to do. For instance, I doubt if anyone really cares if a shopkeeper sells you cigarettes, or if you are invited [in a polite, non-threatening manner] to join others in various sexual acts. But both of these things would be illegal if you were under the stipulated "legal age".

And as we are all aware, there is no logical consistency about which products are legal and which are illegal. For instance, why is tobacco legal and marijuana illegal? And perhaps more illogically, why is the well known natural anti-depressant, kava, illegal in Western Australia, but legal in the rest of Australia?

What I believe should be addressed is the deliberate targeting of children by unscrupulous advertisers who are not telling the truth. Eating fattening junk food is depicted as fun. Well, it's hardly fun to be obese, particularly at a young age. And it's hardly fun to be dying prematurely, from a self inflicted condition.

I don't believe in being overprotective of adults, who are hopefully mature enough to make their own considered choices. But we already try to protect our children from exploitation in all sorts of ways.

As for politicians being forced to tell the truth. If we waited for that to happen before trying to enforce honesty in advertising, well we'd wait for ever, wouldn't we?

Well said Rex

Alchemist says “I agree with Pericles, if its legal, advertise it, that's they way the world works as it should be.”

I Don’t agree. There are a number of legally available products such as alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs where advertising is either illegal or restricted in some way.

The purpose of advertising is to manipulate and modify behavior – more precisely to try to make consumers consume more of the advertised product. It works. Otherwise corporations wouldn’t spend billions of their shareholders’ money on it. There are some situations where this is clearly immoral and harmful e.g. the promotion of drugs or other addictive substances to children (or, arguably to adults).

Some might argue that it's up to parents to control kids' comsumption patterns. I'm not a parent myself, but if I were I'd be pretty pissed off if I was constantly forced to counter some corporations attempts to manipulate my kids.

Junk food advertising may look naff, but it’s actually very sophisticated at targeting and manipulating its audience, which is mainly children and young people. It is extremely effective at increasing the consumption of its product (although I wouldn’t claim this as the only factor in the so-called obesity epidemic). As with other harmful products we should think very carefully about whether such promotion should be restricted. Personally, I regard targetting any sort of advertising toward children as a form of child abuse.

Rex & Snout

I agree with you both.

Children simply do not have the same level of development of decision making skills that (most) adults have. It IS a gross form of manipulation that advertising these products, which are as detrimental as tobacco or alcohol, to children. I think Snout put it well as 'child abuse' - also a form of parent abuse - try shopping with a bunch of kids at the supermarket.

I understand that the majority of soft-drink companies have stopped supplying schools. Won't stop kids from going to the local cafe, but at least it will reduce the level of consumption of these sweet fizzy drinks.

Children do go shopping you know and they go to school where their friends will introduce them to all types of "yummies" so really I think the thing is educate children with the "sometimes theory" and mums be a little imagitive when feeding your kids. Just my opinion

Sheesh!

>>The purpose of advertising is to manipulate and modify behavior<<

In much the same way as the purpose of Today Tonight or A Current Affair is to manipulate and modify our understanding of what is happening around us. A six-year-old might believe every word of it, but is that sufficient reason to ban it from being broadcast?

I run a business. I need to advertise so that people know that my product exists, what it can do for them, how much it costs and where they can buy it.

If I have an illegal product - let us say sawn-off shotguns - I am not allowed to provide the public with the above information. But if my product is legal, why on earth should you prohibit me from advertising it? What possible logic can you bring to bear that will justify such an action?

I am well aware of political pressure, and the need for politicians to maximise their feel-good quotient with the voting public. But it is this - not logic - that will drive them to use such expressions as "immoral" to describe companies going about their lawful business, and "child abuse" as a generic label for pictures of hamburgers.

>>Personally, I regard targetting any sort of advertising toward children as a form of child abuse.<<

Oh please!! If advertising Barbie dolls is a form of child abuse, where on the spectrum of human behaviour do you place beating them with a leather strap, or forcing them to do their homework?

Let us at least keep some sense of perspective in this discussion. If it is illegal to sell a product to young people, the legal responsibility for this restriction should lie with the retailer, as it has done since time immemorial.

This continuing crusade to protect us from real and imaginary harm is slowly taking away our freedom to choose how we spend our lives, and I for one resent it fiercely.

Pericles,

“I run a business. I need to advertise so that people know that my product exists, what it can do for them, how much it costs and where they can buy it.”

That’s fine: I have no problem with that kind of advertising: it’s probably essential to keeping the wheels of capitalism turning.

However, you’re not seriously claiming that that’s the intent of most junk food advertising, especially that directed toward kids, are you? I doubt there’s a kid in the whole Western world who doesn’t know by now that McDonalds products exist, what they can do for them, or where they can buy them. The purpose of such advertising is purely to boost sales by modifying the child’s consuming behaviour. When the behaviour the advertiser is trying to achieve is actually harmful to kids, this is immoral. This is why we don’t allow tobacco advertising, and alcohol advertising is supposed to be directed carefully to adults (although in reality a lot of it targets teenagers).

The Barbie doll example – well I could probably wear that, but I’m not sure that a parent who’s been exposed to years of relentless pester power would agree. I’d place it well below beating them with a leather strap, but quite a bit above making them do their homework on the child abuse scale.

I know that trying to maximize consumption is supposed to be vital to a healthy economy, and that advertising is a part of that process. My own interest in this comes from working with addicts, and from my understanding of the neurobiology of addictions, in particular the role of cueing to addictive behavior patterns (which is where junk food advertising comes in). The neurobiology of drug addictions is very closely linked to that of other types of addictions, such as gambling and overeating. I am very uncomfortable with teaching kids to consume, and to value consumption in itself, from an early age, before they have the capacity to think critically about the messages that they’re being bombarded with.

Snout, the points I am trying - and obviously failing - to make are i) that the cure is out of all proportion to the disease and ii) using over-emotive arguments in a matter as trivial as advertising is harming the fabric of our society.

>>I doubt there’s a kid in the whole Western world who doesn’t know by now that McDonalds products exist, what they can do for them, or where they can buy them. The purpose of such advertising is purely to boost sales by modifying the child’s consuming behaviour<<

You completely ignore one other key facet of capitalism: competition.

McDonalds is in daily competition with Hungry Jacks, KFC, Subway, Red Rooster and a host of other fast food possibilities - and that ignores completely the existence of non-fast-food, with which they also need to compete.

If McDonalds are prevented from bringing themselves to the public's attention, they would probably lose some market share.

But the act of prohibiting them from advertising would raise some interesting questions. Would they be the only recipients of such action, or would it also apply to.... whom else? Other fast-food outlets? Only fattening ones? What about those that sell fattening and non-fattening food?

Most importantly, who will draw the line?

There would presumably need to be a register somewhere of conforming and non-conforming food... who would decide upon it, and against what criteria?

We could find ourselves in a situation where a government minister - who just happens to be a vegetarian - makes these decisions on our behalf. A bit like a government minister - who just happens to be a catholic - making decisions on abortion policy.

Sorry, banning advertising of a legal product is not a solution.

A step in the right direction:

"Uncle Toby's forced to drop Roll-ups fruit claims-after the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission raised concerns"

http://www.optusnet.com.au/news/story/abc/20060913/16/business/1740243.inp

Presumably the implication is that Uncle Toby's was not telling the truth in their advertising of Roll-ups. And it appears that Australia already has the means to regulate dishonesty in advertising.

I would like to see truth in advertising as a principle upheld in law, with appropriate penalties for deliberate serious breaches. Maybe you would agree with this, Pericles, if you were unfortunate enough to be misled by false advertising and suffered a serious loss as a result, under circumstances where you did not have suitable recourse. But whether you agree with this or not, the general public should be protected from commercial liars.

There is a precedent. Tobacco used to be advertised as being associated with glamour, health, sport, success, beautiful emancipated ladies and handsome macho men. It took far too long, but Australia eventually banned such nonsense. But not before tobacco related deaths were at epidemic level. Well, obesity is now at epidemic level too and demanding truth in advertising in regard to junk food would be a step in the right direction.

Rex,

I don’t think the issue of truth in advertising is so much the problem: as your link showed there are mechanisms to pull marketers into line when they start stretching the rules about what is factual and what isn’t. Although I’m always fascinated by some of the pseudo scientific claims beauty products seem to get away with. I’d love to know the science behind making your hair up to 87.2 % flouncier or whatever, but I’ve never been able to track down the website of the American Academy of Hair Flounciness to check the studies.

Advertising is often much more subtle than simply providing information that may or may not be factual. It's more often about generating emotional responses people associate with the product. The idea is to cue these responses to modify people's behaviour.

The most successful Aussie ad ever, the perennial VB ad series (not sure if you get them interstate)is a brilliant example of the ad maker's art. It consists of nothing more than a series cues "You can get it x-ing a y" coupled with a basic drive (thirst) tied to the product. Strictly speaking, a hard earned thirst needs water - the hops, barley and alcohol are physiologically optional - but the ad is as fine and elegant (from an advertiser's point of view) as a Picasso line drawing.

My concern is what happens when you expose small children to such relentless cueing to a product that - while benign small doses - has addictive potential and significant health consequences with increased consumption.

Pericles,

The “market share” argument was used by the tobacco lobby when they were fighting moves to ban tobacco advertising. Companies argued they were only competing with each other for a stable existing market, and that advertising didn’t affect the size of the total pie. This claim was repeatedly shown to be rubbish.

We accept a variety of restrictions on the ways addictive substances can be marketed and advertised, from outright prohibition, (e.g. heroin, cannabis) through prescription only (some other opiates, benzodiazepines), through no advertising, regulated supply (tobacco) through restricted advertising, regulated supply (alcohol) to complete free for all (caffeine, junk food). The fact a product is not prohibited doesn’t mean that advertising shouldn’t be regulated. I’m sympathetic to your question about who decides and how you draw the lines, but the fact it’s difficult doesn’t mean you should ignore the issue. My instinctive libertarian streak makes me suspicious of “nannying”, but I think we have an obligation as a society to protect children from exploitation by companies that don’t have their best interests at heart.

I don’t think this is a trivial issue. The trends suggest we’re facing an epidemic of coronary heart disease and type II diabetes. My understanding of how addictions develop suggests to me we’re priming kids from an early age for later addictions. Of course all professionals have tendency to overstate threats and risks – it’s how we maintain a sense of self importance. But I reckon this is where the science is heading.

Not sure if I want to see a total ban, but I’d like to see junk food marketers not directly targeting kids who are too young to understand what is being done to them

A good, reasonably non-point-of-view link with a good overview of the issues on this subject is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_food_advertising

(I'm really becoming a massive fan of wikipedia. They seem to have articles providing basic information on just about anything).

An accurate cartoon comment:

http://www.newstarget.com/020430.html

Hey Pericles you may want to check out this http://www.realfreeads.com website if you're looking for posting of your advertisement.

This site offers free posting of advertisement including IMAGES(just make sure,it won't be too large file so that it won't take long to display).

Check the site and I hope this can help you advertising problem.

Interesting topic- I'll do a quick reply due to time limit.

"Not sure if I want to see a total ban, but I’d like to see junk food marketers not directly targeting kids who are too young to understand what is being done to them "

I agree.
If, as a first step, Mcdonalds, hungry Jacks etc would stop bribing kids with toys it would help.

These toys often come out as a series of 4 or six.
If a parent 'gives in' to buy a so-called "happy meal" because the kid aches for the toy, many parents feel pressured into keep buying these happy meals every week so the child won't miss out on a toy in the series.
I've been there once or twice- it's an aweful situation.
I thought of robbing mcdonalds of their toys and handing them out with my plates of spinach or cauliflower.
Can you imagine the headline: "Mother Robs Mcdonalds of Happy Toys".