A new report, How Parents are being Misled (click here >> for the report) prepared by The Food Commission on behalf of major UK charity, the British Heart Foundation, has investigated the ways in which breakfast choices and packed-lunch snacks are marketed to parents – the report cites a representative of Honey Monster Foods as saying ‘We couldn’t target children directly ... but our brand has such a long heritage that we decided instead to advertise to adults to remind them about Sugar Puffs.’
The report looks specifically at a number of techniques that appeal to parents, including:
- Selective nutritional claims – for example, Kellogg’s Coco Pops are ‘free from hydrogenated fats’... but contain 41g of sugar per 100g, and the adult (rather than child) GDA is used in displaying nutritional content, making it harder for parents to make a fully informed choice.
- Quality claims that ‘hide’ nutritional content – for example, ‘real cheese goodness’, used by Dairylea Bites – just one of which contains nearly a third of a child’s recommended maximum saturated fat intake.
- Emotional insight, such as Nestlé’s recognition of the conflicts that parents have with children over food: ‘bring some fun to the breakfast table with a chocolate or strawberry flavoured Nesquik Magic Straw as a great way to help them polish off their cereal milk’ (along with the 58.9g of sugar per 100g of product).
Also highlighted are the ways in which food manufacturers take advantage of uneven regulation. Although HFSS foods cannot be advertised during children’s programmes, this covers as few as '1 in 20' of the programmes that are most watched by children: families are constantly being exposed to misleading adverts during prime-time programmes (e.g. the X-Factor), which attract a young audience.
BHF is calling for consistent regulation across all pre-watershed (9pm) television advertising, for consistent legislation to cover marketing across all media (broadcast and non-broadcast - e.g. on-line), and for mandatory front-of-pack labelling (the BHF favours a combination of traffic lights and GDA).
This report makes even more clear the need for consistency of messaging and information on packaging, so that parents can easily compare different products, and accurately assess the nutritional value of each product. It would have been useful if the BHF report had itself included the levels of sugar, salt and fats per portion, rather than just per 100g – a problem that is often faced by consumers.
Source: British Heart Foundation, 14 December 2008.