Britain Imposes a Ban on Daytime Junk Food Ads, Should Canada Follow the Lead?
As a means to combat obesity and to encourage healthy eating, the U.K. announced a ban on daytime television and internet ads that promote unhealthy foods.
While the new rules formulated by Britain are targeted towards the children who are leaving the primary school overweight, some of wondering whether the Canadian policymakers would be following the lead to implement a food ban on junk foods.
According to food policy experts and nutritionists, any kind of ban or tax on unhealthy food items would not have much impact on the Canadians’ eating habits as a whole, but it would remain a step in the right direction, especially when it is paired with other policies put in place to discourage unhealthy eating.
Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, obesity expert and University of Ottawa associate professor, said that implementing such an ad ban on junk foods is absolutely an obvious choice given the saturation of junk foods on TV and online.
Freedhoff said that though Canada should be instead of pushing for multiple policies to shape Canada’s obesity rates, likening the ban for the hunk food ads to that one out of the many sandbags would help to stop the flood.
Freedhoff added that reducing the exposure to those ads is certainly not going to hurt as it is likely one of the sandbags that will be required to see the food environment change.
According to Obesity Canada, the prevalence of obesity in adults has increased at least three-fold in the past 30 years. That prevalence and also the unintended price of the obesity rates are also expected to increase over the next several years.
Obesity Canada spokesperson Brad Hussey said that there is not ample evidence to suggest that the obesity rates would be impacted by any sort of junk food bans or taxes.
Hussey said that while such kind of ban would make the food environment healthier for everyone, but science says that the drivers of obesity are much more complicated than the energy imbalance alone.
Furthermore, Hussey wrote in an email that prevention and treatment approaches must address all the drivers of obesity if they genuinely intend to be successful.
The fast-food taxes, bans, and other advertising limits are simply health promotion strategies as the framing of these interventions as obesity prevention strategies are not helpful in the context of obesity.
The idea of limiting the advertising of junk food, especially to children has already been considered in Canada before.
In Canada, Bill S-228 which was introduced in 2016 limited the companies’ ability to advertise unhealthy food to all children below the age of 13. Many health experts had advocated for the bill in the hope to cut down the childhood obesity rates, but the bill somehow died in 2019.
The Director of the agri-food analytics lab at the Dalhousie University, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois said that any limit or tax on certain food items should be done with utmost precaution and prudence.
I am Darryl Broadhurst and i give investors an insight into the most recent news hitting the “Technology” sector in Wall Street. I have been an independent financial adviser for over 11 years in the city and in recent years turned my experience in finance and passion for journalism into a full time role. I perform analysis of Companies and publicizes valuable information for shareholder community.
