World failing to protect children from unhealthy food marketing: New Zealand expert

A leading New Zealand health expert who co-wrote an international study on the marketing of unhealthy food said Friday that governments and food companies globally are failing to protect children from the risks of obesity.

The study, published in the World Health Organization (WHO) Bulletin this month, reviewed the progress by countries and the top 22 global food companies on enacting the 2010 WHO recommendations on restricting unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children.

It found that no country or company had fully implemented the recommendations and that progress in general was very slow and patchy.

Co-author Professor Boyd Swinburn, of the University of Auckland, said progress on protecting children from marketing of the products driving the childhood obesity epidemic had been "painfully slow."

"It is very disturbing that despite all the fine commitments, most governments around the world seem reluctant to restrict the food industry's exploitation of children in this way," Swinburn said in a statement.

"I am afraid it speaks volumes about the power that the food and advertising industries have over governments, even as childhood obesity continues to rise," he said.

"The sophistication of marketing techniques and the use of social media means that exposure is almost certainly increasing."

Swinburn said that in New Zealand, which had the third highest child obesity rates in the industrialized world, the government had yet to shift from a hands-off approach to an active approach. Endit