As companies target children with unhealthy food over the internet, an Irish obesity specialist believes the time has come to regulate internet marketing to children. Theresa Judgereports
Research in the United States has highlighted the extensive use being made of the internet by large food companies in marketing unhealthy food to children.
A Kaiser Family Foundation study described as the "first comprehensive analysis of the nature and scope of online food advertising to children" was conducted in response to increasing concern over obesity levels in the US.
In Ireland, the Irish Heart Foundation and the National Heart Alliance has also warned of the many different ways unhealthy food is being marketed to children in a submission to an Oireachtas committee.
It called on the Government "to take steps to protect children from all sources of food marketing, not just on television - two key sources are the internet and schools".
A major concern is that while some attempt has been made to regulate TV advertising to children through the Children's Advertising Code, introduced by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) in 2005, there is no such regulation of the internet.
The Kaiser study stated: "Unlike traditional TV advertising, these corporate-sponsored websites offer extensive opportunities for visitors to spend an unlimited amount of time interacting with specific food brands in more personal and detailed ways."
It found that 85 per cent of major food brands that target children through TV advertising in the US also use branded websites. The study documents the methods used, including "advergames" - online games that use a company's product or brand characters, which was found on 73 per cent of the websites examined - and "viral marketing" - where children are encouraged to promote the product to their friends, which was a feature of 64 per cent of the sites studied.
Other advertising and marketing tactics included sweepstakes and promotions, on-demand access to TV adverts and incentives to buy products. Many of the games encouraged repeat playing or suggested other games to keep children on the site for as long as possible. One site told children that if they sent the site to five friends, they would get a code to give them access to additional features on the site. On another, children could earn stamps by viewing TV commercials on a website "theatre".
A website of a well-known brand of sweets told children they could watch ads "over and over right now" instead of having to wait for them to appear on TV.
The Kaiser researchers concluded that while the reach of online advertising in the US was not as broad as that of television it was "much deeper".
Maureen Mulvihill, health promotion manager of the Irish Heart Foundation, says a number of EU and World Health Organisation reports have drawn attention to the way the internet is being used to market unhealthy food to children. She says a major problem in Ireland is "a lack of monitoring tools and a lack of data".
The foundation's submission to the Oireachtas was concerned with the marketing of foods high in fat, sugar and salt. These include snacks, fast foods, confectionary, sweetened cereals and soft drinks. The majority of foods marketed to children both on TV and on the internet falls into this category.
Mulvihill says marketing has been shown to be linked both to food consumption and to obesity. Marketing methods used by food companies on the internet are very subtle and mean there is a "blurring between entertainment and advertising", she says.
"We lack any hard data - there needs to be better monitoring and tracking of what is happening on the internet and the impact it is having on children," she says.
Mulvihill says the cumulative effect of different forms of advertising must also be considered - unhealthy foods are being marketed on TV and the internet and also through sponsorship of school sports events.
She says the Irish Heart Foundation does not say that any particular type of food should never be given to children but foods high in salt, sugar and fat should form only a very small part of their diet. The problem, she says, is that children are consuming too much of them and they are replacing healthier foods, leading to obesity and other health problems.
She says that in the US last year, 600 new food products were developed purely for children and only a very small percentage of these could be described as healthy food.
While many doctors and health lobby groups, including the Irish Heart Foundation, argue that the BCI's Children's Advertising Code for TV has proved inadequate in curtailing food adverts to children, the global nature of the internet and the difficulties regulating it make this a much more difficult issue to address.
A consultant who specialises in obesity, Dr Donal O'Shea, says he believes it is crucial that a way be found to regulate internet marketing to children.
"Industry has shown it cannot self-regulate and the time has come for legislation in this area because legislation is the only thing that works," O'Shea says.
He works at an obesity clinic in Loughlinstown hospital and in St Vincent's hospital in Dublin and says obesity levels "are now at completely unacceptable rates - between 10-12 per cent of children are obese and the numbers are increasing at a rate of 10,000 a year".
The use of the internet is becoming much more of an issue as many food products now encourage children to log on to websites by using such ploys as telling children they may have won a prize.
"It is absolutely established that there is a link between marketing and obesity," he says.
O'Shea says the food industry has shown that its main concern is with "bottom line, year-on-year profits and not with public health - if industry cared about the health of consumers, they would not be doing this type of advertising".
While the arguments put forward by food companies "sound reasonable" in that they stress individual responsibility and there is "an element of truth in that", O'Shea believes legislative measures are needed to protect children from being targeted. While legislation in relation to the internet might be difficult, he believes a means of regulation could be found, for example, by imposing tax penalties on companies that breach regulations. He stresses that the consequences of doing nothing are too serious as the rising levels of obesity are putting extra pressures on health services.
"I am sitting here with 16-stone 16-year-olds and 20 stone 20-year-olds who just did not exist in this country 20 years ago," he says.
The Green Party, which is opposed to all TV advertising of unhealthy foods to children, also takes the view that means could be found to try to regulate internet marketing.
Spokesman John Gormley says that while it is true that some form of international agreement would be required, a way had been found to deal with libel on the internet by introducing legislation, even though it was initially thought that this would be difficult to legislate for. "I believe that if the political will was there, something could be done," Gormley says.