Children Caught In Web Of Junk Food Promotion - New Cancer Council Report Exposes Marketing "Trickery", Australia

Apparently, down under, parents are as irresponsible as they are up over, and the apologists are the same, too.

"Parents fighting childhood obesity must compete with clever and pervasive junk food marketing pitched directly at young children, according to an independent study conducted for The Cancer Council Australia.

The Cancer Council is calling for regulation of junk food marketing to children to reduce an expected obesity-related surge in future cancer incidence, with the new research emphasising how extensively food companies promote their unhealthy products to young children and use imagery to convey a false association with health and fitness."

If there is a "false association" then it must be stopped.

Just as the "clever and pervasive junk science marketing pitched directly at parents and children" by the diet and sick care industries must be stopped. (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

The problem is that there is no known association between health and fitness except at body weight.

And body weight, for all practical purposes, depends on Calories in vs. Calories out, not the source of the Calories. (see here, here, here and here.)

Leave it to the experts to screw it up for businesses and consumers.

"Chair of The Cancer Council Australia's Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, Terry Slevin, said the new report, Food Marketing to Children in Australia, showed the extent to which food companies directly advertise to children, rather than to their parents.

'Use of online games, quizzes, competitions, cartoon characters, print advertising, premium prizes, toys and other marketing trickery makes promotion of unhealthy food a complex web that often goes undetected by parents who are doing their best to encourage healthy eating,' he said."

"Their best"? Where do the kids get the money to spend on this stuff?

Perhaps a publicly funded study is necessary.

"Best" has been vanity sized to fit poor to mediocre.

"'Our findings suggest that, despite these policies, most of the products promoted to children - and recalled by children - were those high in sugar, fat and salt,' Professor Jones said. The report concludes that Australia's current regulatory arrangements around food marketing are ineffective in helping to control consumption levels of foods that have a negative impact on the health of Australian children."

So don't purchase the stuff.

This would be the best "regulatory scheme" of all.

And the only effective one.