Burgers, sodas, and chocolate bars that have long been featured on prime-time television may be outlawed as part of a newly elected politician’s advertising strategy.
As a result of riding the Teal wave to victory in the March federal election, Dr. Sophie Scamps has given up her general practitioner position on Sydney’s Northern Beaches for an office in Parliament House.
The Independent member for Mackellar is working on a private members’ bill to ban prime-time junk food advertising and team sponsorships in order to combat Australia’s obesity crisis.
Advertising that targets kids has to be examined, as do periods when kids are watching TV and when they are attending sporting activities. Dr. Scamps told the Sydney Morning Herald that they may be altered.
Sport, especially at the collegiate and professional levels, is one of the biggest venues for fast food advertising money.
KFC has long been associated with Australian cricket, and Hungry Jack’s recently renewed its branding rights to the National Basketball League.
In a similar vein, McDonald’s has extended its 10-year collaboration with the Australian Football League and continues to support Little Athletics in NSW in addition to hundreds of other amateur sports organisations.
A quarter of Australian children are overweight, and 10% of them are obese, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. As a result, some people believe that all the advertising for junk food may be interfering with the promotion of sports as a healthy activity for kids.
“We can choose. To address the load of chronic health diseases, Dr. Scamps suggested that we either consider prevention or immediately begin to dramatically expand our hospital systems.
She made a comparison between it and the 1980s tobacco advertising ban in sports.
Although it has the authority to forbid all forms of advertising, the federal government prefers to let the sector regulate itself through the Ad Standards set of rules.
This policy stipulates that sporting sponsorship is acceptable as long as only the brand logo is displayed and no images of the problematic food or drink are ever shown.
Additionally, “junk” food cannot be promoted during blocks of children’s programming, but it is acceptable during prime time when children may be watching with adults, and there is even more ambiguity online.
Children are exposed to more than 820 junk food advertisements on average each year, according to the previous administration’s National Obesity Strategy, a plan to combat the problem that appears to have been shelved ahead of the federal election.
Dr. Scamps claimed that fewer advertisements for children would improve their health and directly correlate to less “pester power.”