NZTBC Chairman Ian Fraser speaks out on the Advertising of Food

True…and largely unconnected.

I want to make an important point about the influence of our medium. Fish and chips are the most popular fast food in New Zealand.

Not McDonalds, not KFC, not Wendys but good old shark and taties. You never see them advertised on TV.

Nor do Chinese takeaways advertise, or small burger bars. And yet these places supply the bulk of fast food for New Zealanders. Banning television advertising of certain kinds of food might hurt McDonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC. But fish and chip shops don't fund local drama. Little burger bars don't subsidise news and current affairs. Chinese takeaways don't support children's programming.

Our advertisers do that - and they include McDonalds, KFC and Burger King.

Long before television advertising appeared in NZ, children were taking their sixpences and shillings to the corner dairy or milk bar and buying treat food. It wasn't called that then - these purchases were called sweets. There were pineapple chunks and TT2 iceblocks and wine gums and bags of crisps and bottles of fanta - treat food. There were tuckshops at school, or just around the corner at lunchtime, that sold pies and hot dogs and chips - fast food.

That was true before television.

Way, way way before television it was also true.

They say of treat foods that they contain 'empty calories'. Well you can find lots of empty calories in our most famous children's stories.

All Alice in Wonderland wanted to eat was cake. Lewis Carroll actually makes the point, and I quote, that Alice "could never find the right thing to eat or drink." Now there's an adult's point of view.

Children - let's be honest - have never gravitated towards "the right thing to eat or drink." In the Narnia books Edward chooses Turkish Delight as his favourite food above all others. In Anne of Green Gables it's little pink candy hearts. Nutritionally questionable nibbles are part of a hallowed literary tradition, and there's a reason for that.

They're what kids want.

Indeed some of the most famous stories of all have counselled against eating so-called 'proper food'. In Grimm's Fairy Tales the wicked witch feeds Hansel and Gretel wholesome fruit and nuts to fatten them up, and Snow White should definitely have said no to that very nice apple.

I'm not trying to be glib.

We should all make sure our children are fed well. Most of us, as parents, emphasise nutrition and limit exposure to fast food and treat food. But it has always had an allure for children. That's my point. It's part of being a kid. I never spent my pocket money on oranges and kiwifruit, and nor do pre-teens today. So if television commercials promote Pepsi, fruit loops, burger rings and snickers bars they're not leading kids into new and wicked temptations. They've always bought this kind of stuff.

The question now - and we agree this is a serious problem - is why is this generation more obese?

Studies have indicated that commercials on television are not the prime suspect.

It's partly because children don't get the exercise they used to. Our streets aren't as safe as they were, so children don't walk to and from school so much. They don't tend to stay and play after school the way kids used to, or use the local parks by themselves - because it's risky in a way it never used to be. Fewer kids ride bikes, or run around to each other's places. They get run around now, by careful parents in cars. Even at home our children exercise less. They're sitting at computer screens, gaming on playstations or watching the tele.

So I suppose television is partly involved here, but not because of the commercials we play. More children now are potatoes, of the couch, mouse or thumb variety. The appropriation of the word 'potato' in this context is metaphorically apt. There's too much carbohydrate in their lifestyles.

This isn't just my opinion. I can point you in the direction of studies that say the same thing. Of course wrong food choices contribute to obesity, but that was true - again - long before TV. It's an an issue as complex as carboyhydrates themselves, and a quick fix like a ban on commercials is not the way to address it.

And I want to say something about papers that have been published into children's health. Beware mandated research! Beware old research too. Studies purporting to show links between television habits and dietary habits can be very old, with small sample sizes. Check to see if they're past their use-by date. I understand that people have axes to grind here, but the axes should at least be sharp.

The recent study out of Massey University Auckland by Lynne Eagle, Anne de Bruin and Sandy Bulmer enlightens this debate, and as far as I know no-one has challenged it. I don't need to go into detail on it because Lynne is with us this morning.

The paper is called "The Children-Nutrition-Marketing Ethics conundrum - identifying the issues."

Their conclusion? Singling out fast food as the villain and often the sole culprit in the obesity problem is incorrect. Advertising restrictions, or a tax on fast foods, they find, is quote "unjustifiable, inequitable and also, importantly, likely to be ineffective" unquote.

You see, the UK and the USA have the same obesity trend in children that we do. Nutritionally a lot of our kids are better fed than ever, but they're less active.

14% of children in one study weren't getting enough fruit and veg, but 50% weren't exercising regularly.

Changing lifestyles and sedentary habits, it seems to me, are the villains of the piece, not advertisers and broadcasters.

Here's something else to think about. Again I'm borrowing from the Massey report, and maybe Lynne will elucidate on this point later. A major 1996 British study undertaken for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food counters many of the direct advertising/food linkages assumptions. It suggests there is no evidence that advertising is the principal influence on children's eating behaviours.

I could repeat that if you like, but I've already stolen enough of Lynne's thunder so I shan't.

What would a ban on children's advertising achieve? Ironically another English study suggests it would result in product price reductions, which could drive consumption of fast food up further.

Proponents of such a move often cite the precedents of advertising bans on alcohol and tobacco products, and John Birkbeck touched on this.

Let's leave aside the question of whether these bans work or not.

There's an obvious qualitative difference between advertising food on the one hand, and cigarettes and alcohol on the other.

We sensibly ban cigarette advertising, and have some restrictions on alcohol advertising. Not only that, we prescribe age limits below which you can't buy alcohol or cigarettes. Those legal prohibitions go back a long way.

Food is surely in a different category. If you're overweight your workmates don't suffer health problems along with you. Having a McDonalds chickenburger combo won't make you lose control of your car, unless you eat it while driving home. I've never seen anyone sweating and shaking because they were craving a squid ring.

Yes food can be harmful. The wrong diet can lead to diabetes and other major health problems, obesity adds to our health costs and reduces our well-being. Some people seem addicted to food.

But there are always at-risk people in the community - there is always compulsive behaviour. There are people addicted to shopping. There are coffee drinkers who gulp down 10 cups a day. There are sex addicts who probably get off on lingerie ads. When people binge on chocolate no-one suggests pulling the Cadbury campaign. Animal Rights activists would possibly like the "Chicken Tonight" commercial taken off air, so should we do that too?

I'm not being entirely facetious here. You can extend the perimeters of this debate as far as you like, so far that you can no longer see the proper centre of the discussion. And at that centre is personal responsibility - the freedom to choose.

We cannot protect humanity from its essential predilections. Because some foods are fattier than we like, or contain fewer vitamins than we would like, is not sufficient reason to restrict their promotion. Before that happens an overwhelming case must be made for the efficacy of such restrictions.

If we were seriously harming New Zealand's children by broadcasting food commercials I would be in the Sales offices tomorrow morning saying "Take them off air". We're not. One of the studies quoted in Lynne's paper, from Hitchings and Moynihan 1998, found that children know which foods are healthiest, but they don't always act on that knowledge. Historically they never have. It's not because of television.

I say "they don't always act on that knowledge". Here's an anecdotal aside, which I'm not presenting as evidence per se because I can't back it up with a study, but at the same time it sounds right to me.

A psychology graduate told me the other day that while kids in an eating experiment will always head for treat foods first, later in the session they start to balance out their consumption, to make healthy choices. They will eventually turn from the bowl of chips to the bowl of fruit.

We forget that when we were children we were smarter than the grown-ups thought we were. Yes they buy the new soft drink they see on the tele, but they don't buy a crate of it. Most of them still drink water, milk and fruit juice as well.

It's easy to forget that while we run the commercials, broadcasters and not just TVNZ, but the other members of the Television Broadcasters Council - Sky, Prime and CanWest also provide substantial airtime to community organisations so they can fundraise and advertise their causes. We all want to see our children healthy, our communities flourishing and we do lots to assist.

We aren't the enemy here. For example, the TVNZ Community Support Foundation donates more than two million dollars' worth of airtime each year to organisations that include Children's Health camps, Diabetes New Zealand, the National Kidney Foundation and the Public Health Association Well Child Coalition.

I know Prime Television last year also supported Diabetes NZ, and the Stroke, Heart and Blood Foundations to the tune of $100,000. TV3 provides support to a number of groups including the Yellow Ribbon programme to prevent youth suicides.

I can hear some of you thinking "Oh that doesn't cost anything, really, running those spots." Well, yes it does. Apart from the two million dollars' worth of advertising revenue TVNZ could get if it sold that airtime, it also costs time, talent and expertise from our staff.

But "cost" isn't the right word. "Cost" implies we broadcasters begrudge it. We don't, and nor should we. TVNZ as the state-owned broadcaster rightly performs this kind of public service. It's an investment in our country, it's part of our raison d'etre, and I know all broadcasters share an obligation to serve the audience in this way. And that audience includes children.

Television does care about children's welfare, and we recognise the importance of reporting on people's attitudes to diet and exercise. In just the past couple of years TVNZ has screened a major "Assignment" documentary on obesity, and the "Fighting Fit" series has looked closely at the importance of exercise and sensible eating. Last year on Documentary New Zealand "Born To Be Big" was a very high-rater, as was "Cindy's Diary - Breaking The Cycle", another doco dealing with the importance of sensible weight loss. There was the programme "Diet Or Die" which examined the consumption of fast food.

Outside these documentary hours our news and current affairs shows are regularly examining dietary developments, as does TV3.

Children's shows such as "What Now?" and Suzy Cato take a highly responsible attitude towards food.

"Taste New Zealand" is one of our leading series, and it's a programme that resolutely promotes the importance of buying fresh, local produce.

TV3 has also screened a number of programmes during the past year addressing the issue of obesity. These include the documentaries "Obesity: Deadly Epidemic", "Target: Dying To Eat" and "The Fattest Men in Britain".

As well as making programmes the industry also make rules. Prof. Birkbeck mentioned that he favoured "limited rules" on ads directed only at children.

We do have rules for advertising in childrens programming, the Children's Television Policy called 'Getting it right for Children':