Obesity must rank as one of the global media’s favourite topics. Barely a week passes without some flabby story detailing how fat people take up too much room on aeroplanes or are the main contributor to climate change and plummeting CD sales. For the media, obesity can only be improved upon by the addition of a qualifying adjective. Morbid. Chronic. No, wait! Even better: Childhood.
For while obesity is perfect material for the media, which relishes in mocking sufferers and rarely attributes the condition to anything but pure greed, childhood obesity brings with it a whole cast of potential suspects, not least parents and the government.
Naturally, fruit and vegetable consumption is always carted out as a reliable means to become healthier and lose weight, but little is made of the damaging impact of TV advertisements – for chocolate bars, burgers and insanely sugary drinks – most of which are aimed directly at children using bright colours, toys, cartoon characters and a sinister-looking clown.
In July, 19 fast food chains in the US agreed to offer healthier meal options for children as part of an initiative by the National Restaurant Association. However, according to a recent study of fast food chains by researchers at Yale University, there is some work to do. The study found that only 27 out of 3,000 food options met the initiative’s standards.
Advertising for unhealthy foods aimed at children should clearly be heavily regulated, perhaps to such an extent that the product is almost unrecognisable. “Is it a pixel sandwich?” viewers should wonder.
But one thing the fresh fruit and vegetable industry has been slow to do is emulate those techniques employed by the fast food industry, in particular the idea of targeting children directly instead of relying on parents. Now, at last, we have Sportacus – the fresh produce industry’s answer to Ronald McDonald, but with more back-flips and less creepiness.
