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McDonalds recently introduced a play food toy set which is being sold through Toys R US in the USA, with increasing levels of childhood obesity, is this being responsible?

The Australian Government has introduced the National Preventative health taskforce but has not regulated the marketing or the use of toys for promotional and advertising purposes, at this stage it is tabled to be phased out.

It is concerning that global icons such as McDonalds have many touch points to children around the world, in Australia they sponsor little athletics, have a restaurant at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, childrens birthday’s catering, branded Characters, ie Hamburgler, internet Games and have branded toy giveaways at their restaurants.

Now McDonalds can build brand awareness through their play food set which included hamburgers, french fries, soft drinks and Sundaes.

It’s strange that McDonalds have healthier meal options yet none of these products are included.

The danger here is normalising the experience of going to McDonalds or eating any fast food for that matter.
As a child going to McDonalds was for special occasions or a rare treat, now there is an expectation that eating fast food is something we engaged with on a regular basis.

I would like to see a survey of Children from the USA or Australia in age brackets from 3 -5 and 6 – 8 and show them the McDonalds logo and ask them to identify the company and secondly to go to a McDonalds restaurant and to see what the children order or point to.

Childhood obesity is a very complicated issue with numerous elements contributing to the overall growth.

All we can do is to evaluate what has changed in the past 10-20 years with the promotion of fast & junk food to help understand and change this global epidemic.

While no one is pointing the blame to any one person, company, school or business, we all have a role to play in helping to reverse the trend.

But there has to be a point where we have to ask if the McDonalds play food set toy is being responsible and what needs to change to address this issue.

Are Junk food companies developing brand loyalty towards children? With childhood obesity being a complex issue, is regulation required?
With the recent approval of McDonalds at the Royal Children Hospital, is creating brand awareness from an early age a good thing.

I like to compare it to tobacco adverting in motor sport, if it had no effect on peoples decision top either change their cigarette brands or influence their decision to commence smoking why would they spend hundreds of millions of dollars placing there logo’s on the cars?

Well guess what, they ban any form of advertising in Australia yet junk food is ok to be promoted unregulated.

Today everyone from breakfast cereal companies such as Nutri-Grain which is a third sugar to McDonalds sponsoring Little athletics.
The next strategy are branded toys and even McDonalds now has a toy whereby the children can make hamburgers in a Barbie doll style plastic kitchen.

Now we are seeing websites created by the big multi nationals with web based games show casing planety of company logo’s and product images.

So why do junk food companies do it?
*Brand awareness
*Creates associations with a particular event or activity
*Creates a relationships with the parents
*Influencing children at an age where they lack the ability to make healthy food and beverage decisions.

Ultimately you can argue that the parents have the final say or control the money to purchase these products but the same can be said for cigarette advertising.
Ultimately it makes it harder for responsible parents to take control of there children’s health.

The latest Government Preventative Health Taskforce document targeting obesity and Diabetes make recommendations to phase out junk food advertising before pm and banning junk food toy competition promotions.
The only issue is the voluntary nature of this report, once again leaving it to the socially responsible corporations to follow the guidelines.
Unfortunately self regulation hasn’t worked as was experienced by Coke last year.

So will the junk food companies adopt a more responsible approach when developing their brand loyalty towards children

106% increase in Australian takeaway food sales from August 1999 to 2009, will the Preventative Health Task Force have any effect?

With the Preventative Health Task Force making recommendations about the banning of junk food advertising during children’s television viewing times, is more needed to change the growth in the consumption of takeaway food?
More so the levels of fat, sugar and salt needs to be addressed in takeaway food guidelines as adding these ingredients is the cheaper option when compared to fresh healthy ingredients.

The latest ABS figures for July show a disturbing trend that takeaway food sales have increased by 105% in 10 years which is interesting given that we have just experienced the GFC.

So will the government initiatives and recommendations at the very least slow done this rate of growth for takeaway food sales in Australia.

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.

Royal Childrens Hospital allowing McDonalds at new $1B hospital, is this sending a positive message given high levels of childhood Obesity?

The Royal Childrens Hospital has introduced a strict nutritional requirement for all food vendors to comply with in order to operate at their new hospital.
The new Traffic Light nutritional guidelines are similar to what has been introduced by the City of Melbourne at the food court at QV Building.

The guidelines are based on having a simple means to quickly determine what is healthy by adopting the traffic light colours of Red, Amber & Green.

The question is whether children would ultimately decide what they want to eat irrespective of whether it is healthy or not and more specifically will having McDonalds at the hospital bring greater benefits to children other than creating strong brand recognition from an early age?

By having McDonalds at at hospital sending a message of endorsement to not only parents but children who may not yet have the maturity or knowledge to make informed nutritional decisions.

While the issue of childhood obesity is extremely complex, is having a fast food company at the Royal Childrens hospital a responsible decision?