Food ads brainwash kids

Children are being brainwashed by TV adverts for junk food, a report warns today.

British experts who carried out the study believe advertising strongly influences what young people say they prefer to eat.

The study, the most comprehensive of its kind conducted on the subject, found most food adverts aimed at children appeared on TV.

They are dominated by what it calls the "Big Four" - breakfast cereals containing sugar, soft drinks, sweets and other snacks.

The past decade has also seen a rapid rise in advertising by fast food chains which often use the offer of free gifts to tempt children, it says. Professor Gerard Hastings, who led the review, believes there is enough evidence to raise serious questions about the impact of food advertising on children.

"This is a comprehensive and extremely thorough review of the evidence on this important and complex issue," he said.

"It reaches a number of significant conclusions about the link between promotional activities and children's eating behaviour. In

particular, it concludes that advertising to children does have an effect on their preferences, purchase behaviour and consumption, and these effects are apparent not just for different brands but also for different types of food."

Professor Hastings and his team at the Centre for Social Marketing at the University of Strathclyde considered almost 30,000 pieces of research before deciding on the most relevant 101 studies on which to base their report.

The Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the study, said today it would be promoting a public debate to discuss the findings. Recent studies have raised fresh concerns about the diet of children in Britain.

The National Diet and Nutrition Survey in 2000 found the majority of British children ate more than the recommended amount of sugar, fat and salt.

Last year, the Chief Medical Officer confirmed that in the previous five years, the proportion of overweight children aged six-15 had increased by seven per cent and obese young people of the same age by 3.5 per cent.

MP Debra Shipley, who introduced a Bill in Parliament to ban TV food advertising for under fives, said: "This independent report is a damning indictment of the advertising industry's marketing strategies to children."

The report says advertisers try to promote food by using messages of "fun and fantasy" rather than nutrition.