Food/drink advertising aimed at children

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There have been discussions about this in the past but I thought I'd post this site address since I remember various people talking about wanting to get involved in a campaign to ban ads aimed at children (but I can't remember who it was, sorry). Anyway, at the time I seem to remember we couldn't find an organisation that supported this but it appears from todays Guardian that an organisation called Sustain do have a campaign going on the subject.

It's also at the forefront of my mind as my (vegetarian) son said he wanted a burger yesterday. When I questioned him further (he's never had one, how would he know?), pointing out that he doesn't eat meat, he admitted that he didn't really want a burger, he wanted the Beyblade you get with it. He's 5 and a half. He didn't get a burger but there's one near advertising victory for Burger King.

Apparently Tessa Jowell has no plans to outlaw advertising to children since it could lead to a fall in quality of children's programmes. Yeah right. Anyway, thought this site might be interesting to some of you even if no-one's particularly interested in discussing the subject.

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Thanks for that link WWW. I do feel quite strongly about this actually! There is a lot of pressure, isn't there, on parents to buy into this consumer culture. Whilst part of me thinks it may be too late, I do tend to hold out most of the time when my children fall prey to the latest ad campaign. My kids are not veggie and do eat the odd burger but I refuse to buy "Happy Meals' etc. Only today, my 5 yr old dd asked for a Burger King burger (at 10 in the morning!!) as we were shopping in town and she noticed the Beyblade promotion. Similarly, I refuse to buy Bob the Builder yoghurts, Tweenies pasta and a million other gimicky rubbishy things, partly because of financial restrictions but more on principle.

There is hope though that we can educate our kids to see beyond the marketing hype. My ds who is almost 8 watched some ad on TV a few days ago and said " I wouldn't buy that * (can't actually remember what it was!) : its pretty rubbish but the marketing is good!" So it can be done!!! Hard, though, esp when dd comes home telling me that everyone in her class has mummies who buy their kids what ever they want except her mummy. Sadly, she's closer to the mark than I thought.

I read yesterday about Sunny D being rebranded as 'a healthy part of your kids diet' - hmmm not so sure that it's quite as good for you as real fruit juice myself.
My ds is too young for all this stuff yet but when did you find it became an issue and how do you try to encourage your kids to see beyond the hype?

www Like other mums here I am not pressured by all the gimmicks. My children do not get bob the builder/tweenies/teletubbies food at all. I refuse to buy it. My children except two are meat eaters. I have tried to give them the facts about food (extremely limited knowledge I have) and they have chosen to be veggie.

P.S Does anyone know a site to find out what chemicals and additives actually mean to our children. Also how food is manufactured.

Mine got bob yogurts tonight - they were reduced to 10p for 6 in safeway .
At that price me and dh got them too.

jasper

Can't believe the cheek of that rubbish that calls itself sunny d. I read on another thread what a dentist had said about it once: that you could keep an open bottle of sunny d in an airing cupboard for a week and it still be drinkable because of all the crap they put in it. Umm, very healthy! DISGUSTING stuff. Was very interested in the link, www. I think the marketing of this kind of awful food is nothing short of criminal.

This is not about advertising but what we eat. The Guardian had the first of 3 supplements on food with Saturday's paper - this is the URL for it:

www.guardian.co.uk/food/focus/0,13290,951051,00.html

If your child has school dinners read "sausage factory" and you might decide to switch to packed lunches.

re Sunny D - my cousin buys it for her son as a TREAT! (But he is a v picky eater and drinker, nothing fizzy so never drinks Coke, Sunny D has got to be slightly better than Coke?)

morocco, I think you can start pointing out the advertisers' game just as soon as your DD is aware of the difference between a programme and an ad - the first time she says "I want that" when she sees an ad for a toy you can start pointing out that whatever it is won't be as exciting as it looks on the telly, and you can go on from that to food things.

Once they start school and "everybody else" has got something - like oxocube's dd - then in some cases you might have to backpedal a bit, especially if they really have all got whatever it is and she can't play something because she hasn't got one.

My kids have been trained to resist ads, and have always enjoyed jeering at the cheesiest ones, so most of their desire for things has come from peer pressure. (We've never had a Gameboy though and DS2 did get left out of playground sessions because of it . Principles can be hard to live with sometimes - especially when they're somebody else's!)

I emailed Sustain to ask about organisations for parents since parents aren't able to join Sustain - they're an organisation for companies. They wrote back pointing me in the direction of The Parents Jury who campaign for changes in the law relating to advertising and food labelling if anyone's interested.

We haven't had to fight over this one yet as ds is only 2 and we don't have a televison, so hasn't been bombarded with food ads. Is it too naive to think that if they never have them in the house they won't expect them. We never had 'branded' food when we were young and probably gave up asking for sweet cereals and things as we knew that we would never get them (deprived childhood and all). I get the impression from friends with older children that the whole peer pressure thing is so much greater nowadays that I'm in for a shock in a couple of years.

I think there's probably a limit to what you can do, but it is completely appalling. its why we got a digibox in the end, so that we could get CBeebies without the ads - although that doesn't stop the whole Bob thing. What really p*sses me off is that advertisers claim that kids can tell the difference between ads and entertainment. yeah, right.

I actually write about food and eating quite a bit - should suggest an article on this subject, really. At the moment I'm wrestling with the whole issue of food labelling and what's called 'fresh'.. you don't want to know...

You're right about the peer pressure these days. I work in a secondary school and I have witnessed a pupil bringing in a flask of soup and being called a "tramp" by other kids . It makes me really angry.
When I'm in the canteen and I see what often passes as a packed lunch, I could cry: processed stringy cheese, plastic-looking ham, salty crisps, etc, etc. I work in a city school in an area you wouldn't exactly call "poor" but neither is it well off. Most of the parents work but the culture is very aquisitive: all the parents drive 4-wheel drive cars; their kids wear the "right" brands; all but one of my year 10 class have a tv in their bedrooms. Most of what is bought is done so on "tick". I hope I'm not sounding judgemental - I think much of the lifestyle of what the kids I teach revolves around is generated by the media - hence the poor eating habits.