How do we protect our children?

I was watching the England v Poland football match on Wednesday night when I was struck by the advertising all around the ground. Every few seconds, the animated ad hoardings flashed up promotional messages for McDonalds, interspersed by ads for Carlsberg lager.

Then yesterday, I was reading Marketing Magazine and happened upon a couple of interesting articles. In the first, it seems that Burger King has pulled out of a Food Standards Agency drive to cut the levels of salt, fat and sugar in food - claiming that to do so would have an impact on the taste of its food (as if it actually tasted of something already). In the second, politicians are proposing a complete ban on advertising junk food in to children in the Children's Food Bill Early Day Motion and their cause is now being backed by celebrity chefs Rick Stein and Gary Rhodes.

The Children's Food Bill explicitly calls for the prohibition of advertising food detrimental to children's health to children. But how is this possible? Hundreds of thousands of children would have been watching the match on Wednesday and would have seen ads for McDonalds. These same children are seeing former England footballer and TV football host Gary Linekar advertising Walkers Crisps on prime-time TV. I'm guessing that the Bill will not address these issues.

It is - frankly - obscene that professional sports clubs allow themselves, their grounds and their games to be sponsored by junk-food peddlers. I don't have a problem with McDonalds' globalisation strategies, but I do have a problem that they pump such unhealthy, disgusting food into children and are allowed to advertise the fact during a major match of our national sport.
And any sportsman or woman who advertises this stuff (think Linekar, Shearer et al) is a hypocrite and is happy to prostitute themselves for a few extra quid - as if they needed it.

Rant over for today ;)

By the way - you can find out more about the Children's Food Bill on the Sustain website.

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