Home

With two thirds of the Australian population overweight or obese, there really needs to be some regulations regarding food packaging and advertising. KFC latest product, the Double Down Burger users the Man time copy line, with a massive 1939 kJ.

While a person’s daily energy intake will vary depending on your age, sex, body size and the level of activity that you engage in, a 31-year-old to 50-year-old male weighing 71 kg requires 8300kj per day based on no physical activities, just to sustain life.

So in just one sitting without the added chips or soft drink nearly a quarter of the days energy requirements are up represented by this fat laden burger (22.3gms).

This advertisement appeared on Facebook under a clients profile who is in their mid-20s. This type of advertising is extremely clever as it targets teenage boys who see the high levels of fat as a gastronomic challenge while men may find this targeting their masculinity.

This is a classic case where food labeling is required that identifies this as a high health risk product given the high percentage of energy and fat.

A tax on energy dense foods would make such products extremely expensive and would remove their attractiveness as a product to be consumed on a regular basis.

This is a classic example where one would need to really evaluate KFC’s motivation in bringing out such a highly energy dense product when they’re recommending that the clients climb the stairs to burn 930 kJ which is just under half the energy contained with this one burger.

Without singling out KFC, the other fast food companies are hardly squeaky clean with hungry Jack’s ultimate double whopper burger packing our humongous 5085 kJ and McDonald’s the Mac having 2060 kJ. I guess the most disturbing thing about the KFC double down burger is the fact that there is no bread and vegetables whatsoever, just meat or rather processed meat and preservatives.

Hopefully this product stimulates a lot of debate about advertising standards, food packaging and perhaps even a energy tax.

Across the road from where we run our boot camps in Northcote, I came across this sign promoting the supermarket brand and that patronising these stores a will lead to the generation of funds for school sports.

It’s disturbing that our Australian school system has become reliant on large corporations to generate additional income to manage the shortfalls from what is available from the government.

The shortage of funds available to the public school sector has led to other forms of fundraising activities involving large corporations, typically this involves the school canteen whereby selling highly processed, fatty and sugary food is given precedence over healthier choices.

Unfortunately it’s all the bad food that should be consumed infrequently that tends to have the highest profit margin which in turn leads to greater income generation.

A recent report titled “Education at a Glance” produced by the Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation painted a very appalling situation in regards to Australia’s school funding reputation.

Compared to other countries, Australia ranks 26 out of a total of 28 countries in regards to the proportion of public versus private government funding. When compared to other countries for example the US where 99.8% of government funding is allocated for the public education system, only83.1% is invested in public schools.

This places enormous stress on the public school system to source additional funds from other willing participants who wish to expand their brand recognition and increase revenue of their products.

While it can be argued that supermarkets sell a range of food products, including junk food etc, it is instilling from a very young age the association with sports where one buys their food. As parents wish to support the school to generate additional funds, they will be encouraging friends and family members to participate in the program, similarly they will be trying to purchase the maximum amount of products from the supermarket.

While supermarkets dominate the food distribution landscape, (Back in 2007 this was a staggering 79% combined market share between Coles and Woolworths) we need to educate the next generation that there are other options out there when purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables.

Children who develop brand recognition as children go on to be come consumers in their adult life, they establish a loyal customer for life.

There are numerous examples of whereby the these large corporations have established lifelong customers through the early branding initiatives, one example is the money tins that were freely given away by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the 70s. Once a relationship and association has been established from a young age, the child will go on to become an adult customer.

This is a worrying trend that will not go away as schools are constantly seeking alternative forms of fundraising, fortunately the confectionery companies fundraising boxes has been banned from many schools.

With the food industry’s fear of the imminent legislation looming over advertising to children, their self regulated code seems to be a bit of a joke.

Recently there have been two breaches of the self-imposed code, with the advertising standards Bureau’s complaint regarding a recent Nestle advertisement featuring children interacting with their products.

The food industries guidelines stated that they would not advertise to children under 12 for any food products or high in salt, sugar and fat.
Nestle way later acknowledged that smarties did not constitute a product that fell within the parameters established under their own guidelines.

A similar situation is happening with regards to food labeling, with many big corporate food companies adopt thing and RDI label across the top or bottom of the packaging. While it may be construed as a good initiative by the food industry, it is a sneaky way of manipulating dietary information to receive a positive outcome, that their products are low in sugar, fat and salt.

In the spirit of political speak, they turned the incident around saying that the code was working as advertisements which breached the code were withdrawn rather than these ads should never have been broadcast in the first place. This begs the question if these ads were not brought to the attention of the advertising standards Bureau, whether the Food and Grocery Council would have voluntarily moved to have these ads withdrawn.

The writing is on the wall for other big conglomerates, as the fast food industry has also the precautionary steps to introduce their own guidelines with regards advertising to children. This is been adopted by seven of the big players in fast food such as McDonald’s, Hungry Jacks, KFC and Pizza Hut.

With childhood obesity reaching epidemic proportions, there really needs to be accountability and guidelines more in keeping with marketing unhealthy to food to children.

Also interesting is the exemption of websites from the code, if you look at the Freddo Frog’s website, I’II let you decide whether this is in breach of the code.

Is the corporatisation of exercise a good thing? Is having fun and exercise associated with a soft drink creating or maintaining a future client base and developing brand loyalty?

I road past this Coca Cola inflatable castle on the weekend and was surprised at the expense that a corporation had gone to create awareness of there products and the association of happiness with a Coke product.
Right up there is the word happiness for all to see.

It is a sad day when we leave providing fun exercise activities to major corporations. The government seems to be very good at collecting alcohol and tabacco taxes but seems to short fall in proving health services to children and young adults.

More and more we are seeing the corporates looking at new marketing initiatives and the latest battleground is people’s health and wellness.

An ad featuring Kerry Armstrong about trying to bust the myths about Coke has been busted by the ACCC – Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for misleading the public.
The ACCC yesterday ordered Coca-Cola to publish corrections in newspapers around the country over its “Kerry Armstrong on motherhood and myth-busting” ad published last October.
It’s interesting that a can of 375ml coke contains 39.8 grams of sugar or 13 standard tea spoons.
Excess energy consumption leads to fat storage in the body so a rich sugary drink will not help the waistline.

I like this outcome as finally there is some accountability for making misleading nutritional statements:))))
Unfortunately this is an example of how self regulation doesn’t work as this had lead to the ACCC having Coke busted for misleading the public about their advertisement.