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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.

Australian based fast food companies have agreed to a new guidelines relating to the marketing of children called “Australian quick service restaurant industry initiative for responsible advertising and marketing to children”. This has been signed by McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Oporto, Red Rooster, Chicken Treat, KFC, and Pizza Hutt.

The big break though is that for the first time these companies will make sure that they have a nutritional information available upon request in their restaurants and also information on their websites and packaging where possible.

The impetus behind this is to ensure appropriate advertising to children which follows the communities back lash regarding the practices of advertising fast food to children.

The organisation which the main players in the fast food industry belongs to is called the Australia Association of National Advertises (AANA) who strongly supported this initiative.

To ensure that there is transparency and adherence to the code an independent third party will be assigned to ensure that they all are complying.

The Guidelines go further with the energy requirements, say 4-8 year olds 2080 kilojoules per meal and 9-10 year olds 2770 kilojoules per meal and also stipulate levels of saturated fat, sugar, and sodium. Whether these levels are satisfactory is open to debate.

Awash, the Australian Division of the World Action on Salt and health recommends an upper limit of 2.5gms for 4-8 year olds with a simple chart showing some lower salt options verses what may be a typical salt intake.

So hopefully with the new guidelines the fast food companies can adopt these new guidelines in changing there marketing to children strategies.

Very sneaky how juices which are made from puree and then vacuum sealed are in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, giving the illusion that they are freshly squeezed when actual fact they are like every other concentrated long life juice.

it’s a similar marketing ploy with Soya milk which is actually a juice from the Soya Bean, once again in vacuum sealed packaging.