In the news: Labour would ban high-fat, high-sugar foods aimed at children - what do you think?

[KateMumsnet]

Hello all

Interesting story in the news today: shadow health secretary Andy Burnham is going to pledge to set statutory maximum limits on levels of fat, salt and sugar in food which is marketed to children. Currently, limits are voluntary and industry-regulated.

He'll argue that society should be doing more to ensure that all children - 15% of whom are currently categorised as obese - have a healthy start in life. We'd love to know what you think: is this something that should be government-regulated - and will it work?

That's true too.

But has anyone ever changed their lifestyle because the state told them so?

I doubt it, but I'm happy to be corrected.

I do think the food industry needs to stop peddling crappy food to kids. I work in marketing and I know how effective branding is. They spend millions on pushing brands for a reason. For the food industry and anti nanny state types to shrug their shoulders and say, "well it's the parents responsibility to say no," is grossly unfair because of the distinctly unlevel playing field.

I don't think my viewpoint absolves parents from all responsibility for their children's diet - just takes into account the loaded dice.

That said I think Labours initiative only addresses part of the problem. The fact is that very few people - from all walks of life - cook now. The snobbery of thinking this is a poor people's problem misses the point - ready meals from Waitrose are probably just as bad in terms of salt and sugar content as cheap ones from Asda.

Sadly I think this has got the current Labour Party policy hallmarks all over it - it contains a kernal of a good idea but needs considerably more thought and development. But instead they've just banged it out to generate some headlines. Sadly.

I agree with that, Wasabi. Some years ago I was writing a piece on chocolate and came across a marketing document by Cadbury's - don't ask me how or what, it was a while back! - that was detailing how it planned to push even more chocolate products onto the market, which demographic groups to aim them at and how to entice children into begging for them (ok, that was my interpretation but still pretty accurate).

Things to remember though, that are conveniently (for them!) overlooked - the diet industry has NO INTEREST in people losing weight permanently. If they did, the industry would be gone. And, since low-fat diets have been pushed onto the general population (not that everyone is on one, obviously, but a lot of people are), there has been a steady increase in the number of obese people. Low fat is not the answer, especially when fat is replaced by carbohydrate.

Back in the 1970s my grandmother had a heart condition and was on the tubby side - her cardiologist (old fashioned) put her on a reduced carb diet then to lose weight. NOT low fat. It did help!

ottilie smoking is one example. By taxing cigarettes, restricting marketing and banning it from certain places, the government has cut the % of adult smokers from 50% to 10%. But it's taken time and consistency.

I think there are a few issues here:

1. parents buy food generally so it's the parents who need to decide what food to buy just banning it in kids' food is unlikely to help
2. there is a difference between natural sugar content and added sugar (i.e. Full fat milk contains 4.7g sugar per 100ml, but that's something we don't generally worry about)
3. diet is about balance at all ages - banning foods won't help people learn how to balance intakes. Clearer guidelines on suggested intakes would be good.

"Pester power" is a known phenomenon and one that is actively targeted by advertisers of products for children - I think this has to be stopped. If they can ban cigarette advertising, then they can stop directly targeting children in adverts too.

yep I think the relentless pushing of STUFF is far more problematic than what the stuff is.

this is not like cigarettes. there is a clear cut way of managing the health risks of smoking (as an individual) which is not to smoke. Diet is far more complicated as you have to eat, and the interaction between different foods, their quantities, and overall lifestyle is what matters.

We should be looking after parents, their incomes and their time to parent. the rest would come naturally. resisting pester power takes time and energy as does all good parenting. a healthy lifestyle is expensive in time / money. We all deserve it. few of us can afford it.

Smoking is different though.
It's always bad, no matter what quantities and bad for everybody, whereas high fat high sugar food can and is used in moderation by many.

Also what about salt and other additives?
Why not target those ad well?

I'd definitely support a ban on marketing sweets / junk food to kids.

I'd also like to see them placed in less prominent positions in shops and fewer special offers / bogof deals on junk food.

Salt is mentioned as well, Ottilia

I don't think it'll a good idea because there isn't enough clear evidence about what the healthiest diet for children is - and because the food companies can and will work out a way to make unhealthy processed food that is also low fat and sugar!

I would quite like to see a ban on advertising any foods towards children tbh, children aren't the customers.

EilisLiomoid ... re your "We should be looking after parents, their incomes and their time to parent."

May I ask, how can the State do that?

All the State can do is to provide a good enough education for parents (as children) to help push themselves, offer a healthy economy creating a range of jobs, low taxes for them to keep as much as much of their income as possible, and a good State pension at the end of it - how they take advantage of what the State provides and fit it into their own life balance, mostly down to their choices they make.

The State, even if responsible, can not guarantee any citizen against the affects of a recession, inflation, or even a housing boom - so how can we legislate on all parents wealth, time, and parent skills, for the State to 'look after them'?

How come pretty much everyone on MN realised that naturally occurring fat in food is not the enemy and yet the Government still doesn't seem to have caught on ?

Oh yes it is.
Sorry!

I don't there's anything wrong with children eating high fat food as long as it a good quality unprocessed food. Children need fat to grow.

It's sugary carby crap that they should be worried about.

Also no need to ban food just the way that it's marketed.

ISitme

"push themselves"... what on earth is meant by that?

Basically the economy is not like the weather, it is not a force of nature that human beings are powerless to resist. The economy is the result of human activity, and laws and policies of differing govts will provide the inhabitants of any given country with different resources.

In this country we have escalating housing costs, depressed wages, long working hours, general insecurity of employment and tenancy, and slashed welfare budgets. These conditions show our rulers' aspiration to be more like the US (where "vacation" is a dirty word, people eat shit at their desks, work long hours and people are fat and unhealthy) and less like mainland Europe (where holidays and mealtimes are practically sacred, and people on the whole eat home made food at mealtimes only, in a relaxed and healthy manner)

Everybody knows that it is healthier to eat three (or three and a half, counting a tea time snack) meals made of real food, than graze on shit out of packets all day. there is no problem with education. the problem is with time = money = general energy and resources.

People's well being, including their health, is absolutely directly influenced by their lifestyles and material circumstances, which are directly influenced by govt policies. It is nonsense to pretend otherwise. Govts should be putting policies in place which, overall, are good for us rather than randomly banning irrelevant shit

It depends on how it is implemented.
We have (again) just had the conversation with DS1 following the leaflet from the NHS about eating "better" about no, eating salad all day every day isn't healthy. This is how he has interpreted the message from school.
But we don't have many of the things they want us to swap out - no fizzy pop, no chocolate bar as a after school snack.
If the message is sold that ALL fat and sugar is bad, it will be a really big discussion in this house.
Personally, I'd rather have less full fat than something that has been processed to remove the fat, and salt and sugar added to give the taste and texture.
Ditto for sugar v aspartame/ saccharin.

So, yes. Stop the advertisements, stop the child attractive branding, and make the basics simpler, but please do not tell my 5 yr old, who is on the slight side (NHS tells me 15% are lighter) to switch to semi milk, low fat cheese and sugar free squash. Lets make everything less processed (OK, thats not going to happen)

EilisLiomoid.... further to your reply;

"In this country we have escalating housing costs, depressed wages, long working hours, general insecurity of employment and tenancy, and slashed welfare budgets. These conditions show our rulers' aspiration to be more like the US (where "vacation" is a dirty word, people eat shit at their desks, work long hours and people are fat and unhealthy) and less like mainland Europe (where holidays and mealtimes are practically sacred, and people on the whole eat home made food at mealtimes only, in a relaxed and healthy manner)"

I reiterate, forget the disingenuous pre general election political party soundbites of a 'different' or a 'fairer' way, in reality, WHAT CAN THE STATE DO ABOUT NOW other than the current progress being made - bearing in mind the majority of the problems you cite, were all caused by the State when the UK had a balanced annual budget, not a current £90 billion annual over spend?

Re the European way, may I suggest you look at France, that still has flat growth, has made hardly a dent in their budget deficit (that was around a third of ours in 2010) and RECORD UNEMPLOYMENT around 11%, versus ours at 6%, with record employment.

Re the healthy European cafe culture, we were told by Mr Blair that longer opening hours what is what we needed to drink responsibly, how did that work out for the long term damage of livers/diets of the UK?

Yes, there ought to be government regulation on such issues. When I was at university the most interesting piece of information I gleaned from a research study was on the subject of advertising etc, "We are not passive recipients of what we see and hear in the media we are active participants." Meaning we are swayed by what is advertised, a well know fact that advertisers often dismiss.

We are currently seeing deregulation in all areas of society as government legislate so they no longer have a duty to provide health or social care and Welfare. The consequences are child poverty is the highest ever recorded and there is a 40% increase in youngsters self harming because of poverty since this government came to power and many children are the recipients of food bank

Increasingly people cannot afford food high in nutrition and often have to resort to cheap high calorific food.

I would like a Labour government to tackle the issue of child poverty and child poverty as well as regulating the food industry.

I haven't read other peoples responses. However, I feel that you should educate the parents, rather than limit what you can sell/market to children.

That being said, there are always going to the "you can't tell me what to do with MY child" type people who will buy their children things even if they know it's bad for them. So I suppose it could have a place.

However, I think the answer is less processing, rather than taking out sugar and salt and adding artificial sweeteners.

I'm torn on this one. In general I'm absolutely against this kind of nanny-statism and I loathe Labour's holier-than-thou interventionism. But OTOH I think the marketing of nutritionally empty high-sugar 'foods' to children is utterly unethical. Adults can make their own minds up and should be capable of seeing when advertising is manipulating them. Children aren't equipped to do this and should be protected.

Rather than this kind of tinkering around the edges I'd support a ban on food marketing targeted at children full stop.

JaneAHersey …… interesting points, but factually incorrect in many ways including “since this government came to power”.

Everyone wants to see the issue of child poverty addressed and no politician goes into Westminster to increase it, and while I’m sure the board would love to see your evidence of the highest ever recorded level of child poverty and that governments are legislating to step back from health, social and welfare -the big question away from the political soundbites has to be ‘do the UK politicians understand how this can be achieved’??

I ask this as many politicians appear to think that just being in power will solve the issues, while their record in power shows they are STILL writing ideological cheques their policies in 13-years could not cash, and listening to them now, they STILL don’t understand why, and will repeat them.

So while few will disagree with you on the power of advertising (often to those will little will power), I will put to you that the cost and effects of UK government regulation and red tape has directly CONTRIBUTED to UK (and probably EU) child poverty - and that unless the UK continues the current joined up policy strategy, the issue of eliminating child poverty will remain an ideological future target, rather than history.

So let me try and address your points one by one, as unless UK policies on HOUSING-EDUCATION-JOBS-TAXES-FAT INEFFICIENT REGULATING GOVERNMENTS are joined up, the social consequences for future generations will not be healthy by ANY measure.

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HOUSING: will affect any child’s wellbeing and life choices and according to Shelter, in 2009 there were 1.7 million Households waiting for social housing, 1.4 million children were living in bad housing, 654,000 homes in England were overcrowded and 7.4 million homes failed to meet the governments Decent Home Standard. In 2004 the Brown commissioned Barker Report told the government that even prior to immigration, the UK was building around half the homes that were needed to meet (then) current demand

The Coalition has built in over 4-years, more council homes than the last government did in 13-years and having brought stability and confidence in the UK economy, the private sector will continue to build more homes, unless that confidence changes due to State controls, taxes or just general uncertainty.

EDUCATION: in 2010 our children as evidenced by the upward trending figures 16-24 year old unemployment rates, seemed unable to compete for the apparent 2-3 million new jobs the UK had created with (then) record employment. And anecdotal evidence by employers, from supermarkets upwards, seemed to confirm statistics to show that our children were not leaving schools with the basic skills to compete.

“Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24433320
”A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10631728/Pupils-cannot-count-out-change-due-to-poor-maths-skills.html

UNEMPLOYMENT; in direct response to your increase in young workers self harming, according to the BBC in 2004 nearly 600,000 were unemployed, by the 2007 crash that figure had risen to over 700,000, handing over to the coalition in 2010 just under 1 million .

By the end of 2014, the Coalitions policies to stimulate employment, especially youth unemployment was working, the upward trend not only reversed, but back down to around 700,000. This included the 2010 reversal of Labour’s 2009/10 new higher National Insurance rates and later NI tax breaks for hiring our young.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/10498366/Autumn-Statement-2013-NI-cut-to-stimulate-youth-employment.html

No government can keep promising new apprenticeships at every election if they are overseeing a policy induced ‘tax the economy to growth’ economic model, losing private sector jobs and not having the first clue how to either get them back or create new ones, as the Labour 2010 and current General Election manifestos show.

TAXES; While everyone thinks all companies can afford to pay more, while that may be true for the top 100 or 250 companies in the FTSE, the back bone of our economy is the Small to Medium sized employers, accounting for roughly 70% of our economy – and many are still struggling from the worst recession in 80-odd years.

Telling companies that they need to alleviate Child Poverty and pay higher salaries whilst at the same time year on year increasing their costs of doing business has no sustainable credibility even when then introducing a Working Tax Credit to help boost low pay rates.

From 1997 the cost of ever higher taxes together with new regulation and red tape on businesses were a severe drag on the UK economy and within several years, before the crash, the UK in a global boom had lost around 1 million manufacturing jobs.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

(March 2002) Business pays £15bn red tape bill
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1541302/Business-pays-16315bn-red-tape-bill.html

(July 2005) What Blair really thinks about the FSA
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2918368/What-Blair-really-thinks-about-the-FSA.html

“Tony Blair is gripped by a desire to slash red tape - or so he claimed in a speech last month. That address attracted notice principally for Tony Blair's surprising and controversial statement that the Financial Services Authority is "seen as hugely inhibiting of efficient business" - but his assertions roamed wider than that.”

“No one in any business - be it vast or tiny - needs to be told that the burden of regulation has increased since Labour came to power in 1997. The British Chambers of Commerce estimates that the cost for business of coping with red tape from Whitehall and Brussels will be £39bn this year - four times as much as in 1997.”
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

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