Parents are not happy about television food advertising directed at their children

Parents are not happy about television food advertising directed at their children, according to ground-breaking research carried out in Flinders University School of Medicine.

Responses from parents of school aged children found that while parents were sceptical about claims made by food advertising, they considered it to exert a strong influence on their children.

The research involved in-depth focus group discussions with 32 parents of primary school children in Adelaide.

Parents were recruited through a social marketing agency and also through two socio-demographically different primary schools. The research project spoke with 24 mothers and eight fathers.

The research project was carried out by Ms Joyce Ip, a masters student in Nutrition and Dietetics, and was supervised by lecturer Ms Kaye Mehta.

Ms Mehta said the survey established that parents considered television food advertising to be a powerful influence on children’s eating habits.

“While they recognised that children were also exposed to food messages from their peers, supermarkets and schools, they nevertheless felt that television food advertising was the most powerful,” Ms Mehta said.

“As one parent said, ‘TV would be the biggest one.’”

Parents felt that television food advertising exerted its influence on children primarily through the promotion of toys and give-aways with the food product.

Parents reported that the toys and give-aways strongly influenced their children to want to purchase the food products.

As one parent said, “I think that TV is a lot to blame, like with KFC, McDonald’s and Hungry Jack’s, they offer toys, and I find my son wants these things. It’s not always for the food, but for the toys.”

A number of parents related similar experiences.

Parents were also concerned about their children being bombarded by food advertisements which were repeated constantly in the one advertising segment.

“You are not just getting one McDonald’s ad per advertising block, but you are getting three and it’s a repetition like blocks of three or more that actually helps to sink into the mind,” one parent said.

“Pester-power” was a common experience for parents as children nagged them to buy the advertised food products.

This created conflict and guilt among some parents: “… if you never let them have any of these things, you start to feel like the dreadful parent,” one of the participants said.

Parents were upset by the ethics of marketing, and in particular the use of popular personalities to persuade children to want products: “Don’t they have a conscience? They must know, these sports people, they must know it’s crap,” commented one parent.

Some parents worried about the truthfulness of claims made about food in advertisements and even suggested that the advertisements deliberately lied.

One parent, for example, expressed doubts about a product that claimed to be “100 per cent” chicken breast fillet: “They label it as, but I know that it’s not true”.

Ms Mehta said that overall parents considered food advertising to be a business aimed at making profits out of their children, an attitude summed up in the comment: “The advertising is a big business. . . [There’s] little thought of the children and their future.”

Parents also felt that they had the responsibility both to control their children’s TV viewing and refuse their children’s requests for junk foods.

Ms Mehta said the research demonstrated the depth of parental concern about the effects of television food advertising on children’s eating habits.

“These findings should assist government and industry policy-makers who have been grappling with the growing evidence of the harmful contribution that television food advertising makes towards our children’s health and nutrition,” she said.