Parents key to reducing overweight in children

Editor—According to your news item, Dame Yve Buckland of the Health Development Agency had dismissed the role of food marketing in affecting food choices of children and their families.¹ We were concerned by her quote “child focused food advertising is a real challenge, but parents can fight back—it's them paying at the checkout, not their children.”

Research published by Mintel in December showed that children have increasing independent spending power from school age onwards, and that enormous marketing effort is put into attracting young consumers into impulse purchase of high calorie fatty snacks and sugary drinks.² Such products are available everywhere—in school vending machines and tuckshops, in canteens, and in shops that exploit the pocket money market.

Cartoon characters, sports personalities, and pop stars help to make such foods especially attractive to a younger audience. Many marketing schemes use text messaging on mobile phones to gain children's loyalty. Increasingly, marketing is channelled through schools, where parents are not around to unpick the marketing messages. These initiatives are not aimed at the parents, they are aimed at children who make their own purchases, or who nag their parents to buy products.

Parents are key to improving children's diets and health—and we could all work to empower them to make healthier choices. But if their attempts to introduce children to healthy diets are undermined by persuasive marketing for fatty, sugary, and salty foods, parents will remain isolated and swimming against a cultural environment that fosters obesity and other serious health problems.