Call for ban on peak time junk food ads

TV ads for junk food should be banned during peak viewing times for children according to a doctor and Fianna Fáil TD.

Deputy Jimmy Devins said that restrictions on unhealthy food advertisements, similar to proposals due to come into force in Britain, should be introduced in Ireland.

The TV regulator in Britain, Ofcom, has been ordered by the London government to restrict advertising of unhealthy food during children’s peak viewing times.

Deputy Devins, a GP who is also vice-chairperson of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children, said that the overindulgent nature of the Christmas period, together with recent startling figures of child obesity trends, prompted him to think about the role advertising has in the future health of young people in Ireland.

“The planned ban on unhealthy foods in the UK has not been finalised yet, but it is planned that advertising of such foods be restricted during children’s peak viewing times, and during programmes specifically designed for young people,” he said yesterday.

“A consumer group in the UK believes that a 9pm watershed on such advertisements is the best way to ensure that the restrictions are effective,” he added.

The Sligo-based TD said that advertising plays “a huge role” in they way children choose to eat.

“Catchy advertisements can create a hype in the playground about certain products that can result in peer pressure on children to eat a certain product.

He welcomed enforced healthy school lunch policies which help to curb this problem in a lot of schools in Ireland, but said that the rising rate of child obesity points to a larger problem in diet.

“A survey conducted by school public health nurses in the west of Ireland this year found that more than a quarter of senior infant children are overweight. This is a very worrying statistic,” said Dr Devins.

He plans to raise the issue of advertisement restrictions at the Joint Committee on Health and Children at the earliest opportunity in the New Year.

According to the Government’s Health Promotion Unit, one-in-five Irish children are overweight and one in 20 obese. Throughout the world, children are becoming obese at younger ages and a child is twice as likely to be an obese adult, if obese in childhood.