From ANGELA DONKIN
I am writing to express my support relating to the article by Andy Coghlan
on ‘Britain’s Deadly Diet’ (11 May). The article correctly pointed out that
while nutritional information is available, it is often counteracted by
advertisements for the very foods we are supposed to reduce our intake of.
As a researcher looking into the influences of advertisements on young children’s
food preferences, I find this particularly worrying. These advertisements
are often not questioned by the young audience, who find it hard to abstract
from the ‘reality’ of the television screen.
With four fifths of foods advertised for children being high in sugar
or high in fat, I feel it is time for this kind of advertising to be monitored
and for the food industry to begin to reduce the amount of sugar added to
foods, for example breakfast cereals. As sugar is a learned preference,
surely we can protect our children from disease in the long term by not
encouraging the consumption of foodstuffs they do not even require.
It would also be beneficial, to aid informed consumer choice, if there
were clear labels stating if sugar had been added to the product which was
non intrinsic to the basic foodstuff or recipe.
Angela Donkin The Food Marketing Research Group University of Nottingham
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