Last week hidden in the corner of the regular, relentless news cycle was a news item that the UK had banned advertising of junk food targeting children from both print and social media.
The new rules, which come into effect in July 2017, extend an already existing ban on television ads for “high fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) food or drink products”.
The announcement is a call to arms against the tasty but potentially dangerous foods in what is increasingly becoming a mainstream battle against junk food.
The Committees of Advertising Practice which decreed the ban has said that it hoped the new restrictions will lead to a major reduction in the number of ads for HFSS food and drinks seen by children.
Commonly available HFSS foods or junk foods include carbonated soft drinks, packaged chips/snacks, chocolates, pizza, burger, instant noodles, etc. School children are aggressively targeted through celebrity endorsements; promotional campaigns, etc. by companies of these food products.
Research has found that that consumption of food high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) has been found to be associated with many diseases including type 2 diabetes, hypertension and others. The WHO estimates that as per the current trend, 70 million young children will be overweight or obese by 2025.
While it is no doubt a small step in the larger war and skeptics are questioning its efficacy, it is nonetheless an important one especially in a world where with the backing from a sugar lobby scientists promoted dietary fat as the cause of coronary heart disease instead of sugar. As was reported in September, in USA the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), known today as the Sugar Association, a lobby of sugar growers paid scientists to do a 1967 literature review that overlooked the role of sugar in heart disease.
India too is waging a war against junk food albeit in baby steps. Maneka Gandhi, Union Minister for Women and Child Development, proposed a ban on sale of junk food in school canteens, as well as within a radius of 200 metres by private vendors and hawkers during school hours.
The FSSAI, also in October 2015, had issued ‘Draft guidelines for making available wholesome, nutritious, safe and hygienic food to school children in India’ based on which in January this year the Central Board of Secondary Education, in a circular to all affiliated schools, has asked to ensure junk food is not available in the school canteens.
The AAP-led Delhi government too followed suit recommending schools to ban food high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS). The moves were universally welcomed especially in advocacy groups and even followed up in states like Punjab.
However, such bans are often considered an easy fix for a complex problem. In the UK campaigners have pointed out that the ban has several loopholes which allow it to be implemented only in those media which has more than 25% of their audience as children.
As the Maggi ban saga will testify, regulation in the food sector is rarely thorough, much less seen to be fair and often left in the hands of bureaucrats without any serious political will to back it.
It is these regulatory lacunae that advertising takes advantage of to the detriment of impressionable young minds.
With the problem only likely to get worse, now is the time for the government to step in. Some forward thinking measures could include ranking states not just on the traditional parameters of infant and maternal mortality, birth and death rates and sex ratio and infectious diseases, but also on the obesity, prevalence of lifestyle diseases and others.
Can Goa attempt to be the first state to do this just as it is aiming to be the first state to go cashless?
