A recently elected independent of the Teal party is campaigning for the prohibition of unhealthy food advertisements during prime-time television and sports broadcasts.
Dr. Sophie Scamps left her general practitioner position on Sydney’s Northern Beaches for an office at Parliament House after the May federal election.
The Independent member for Mackellar has set her sights on combating Australia’s obesity crisis and is drafting a bill to ban prime-time junk food advertising and sports sponsorship.
“Advertising directed towards children, during the hours when children watch television, and during their athletic activities must all be evaluated. Dr. Scamps told the Sydney Morning Herald that they can be modified. Sport – both collegiate and professional – is one of the most lucrative promotional venues for fast food companies.
KFC has sponsored Australian cricket for decades, whilst Hungry Jack’s just re-signed with the NBL.
McDonald’s has recently renewed its agreement with the AFL for a further ten years and funds hundreds of grassroots sports groups and Little Athletics in New South Wales. With the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that around one-fourth of Australian children are overweight and ten percent are obese, some assert that all the junk food advertising may be preventing the healthy message of sport from reaching youngsters.
We have options. Dr. Scamps said that either we focus on prevention or we substantially expand our hospital systems to address the chronic health illness load. She likened it to the ban on cigarette advertising that swept the 1980s sporting world.
The federal government has the authority to impose a blanket ban on advertising, but it prefers to let the sector regulate itself via its Ad Standards set of standards.
This code permits athletic sponsorship as long as just the company’s emblem appears and no images of the marketed food or beverage are shown.
‘Junk’ food cannot be marketed during children’s programming blocks, but it is permissible during prime time, when youngsters may be watching with adults, and online, where the rules are even murkier.
According to the previous administration’s National Obesity Strategy – a strategy to address the problem that seems to have been postponed in advance of the federal election – youngsters are exposed to an average of more than 820 commercials for junk food every year.
Dr. Scamps said that a decrease in the number of advertisements children are exposed to would have a favorable impact on their health and immediately correlate to a drop in “pester power.”