Climate, climate emergency, sustainability. It’s all people talk about and do nothing but talk about it (without doing anything else), amidst greenwashing tabloids and trade shows. Childhood obesity and scripted, indeed predatory, marketing, on the other hand, are off-target topics for the mainstream media, always on the leash of big advertising investors.
Unicef brings these and other elements together in its latest report-created with WHO(World Health Organization) and scientific input from The Lancet ‘s Eat Commission-on the health of the world’s children. (1)
Predatory marketing
The health and future of the world’s children and adolescents are exposed, as noted, to the threats of ecological degradation and climate emergency. But also, and more importantly, to reckless and unregulated marketing practices that push children and young people toward purchases of junk food, sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco, electronic cigarettes and gambling.
‘Children’s exposure to predatory marketing of junk food and sugary drinks is associated with unhealthy food purchases and with overweight and obesity. The global number of obese children and adolescents has increased from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2016. An increase of as much as 11 times, with frightening individual and social costs.’
‘Predatory’ marketing is that precisely targeted at children and minors, who are bombarded with diseductive advertising messages. With exposure levels reaching 30 thousand commercials/year (82 per day, on average, concentrated in a few time slots) on the TV channel alone. The reason is simple. ‘The marketing of products for children and adolescents offers excellent dividends to companies, fostering family spending and creating lifelong brand loyalty.’
Junk food, persuasion techniques
The most frequently used persuasion techniques to push children and adolescents to ‘familiarize’ themselves with junk food come through mirages of happiness and fun, with flashes of nutritional and health suggestions (which should have been banned in Europe for 11 years, please note). Characters and testimonials, special offers and playful ‘engagements’ serve to lure minors on different channels (TV and other media, social networks), blurring the line between advertising and entertainment. (2) As moreover documented in recent studies on Coca-Cola and Ferrero.
‘Advertising on social media has exploded in the last decade; however, little research is available to understand what effects the direct report of commercial messaging has on children,’ reads Unicef’s report. It is worth mentioning in this regard that WHO published guidelines https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/progresso/pubblicità-di-junk-food-in-tv-e-sul-web-le-raccomandazioni-dell-oms in 2017 on how to measure the impact of these forms of persuasion on children’s health, recommending their monitoring to member states. Unicef in turn points out that more insidious grooming techniques by so-called kidfluencers – influencers or vloggers who target young children – are ‘barely on the radar of parents and regulators.’
Junk food, alcohol, tobacco and gambling
Children are targets of predatory marketing aimed at promoting disease-causing behaviors that cause physical and psychological dependence, Unicef reiterates. Ultra-processed HFSS(High in Fats, Sugar and Sodium) foods also alcohol and
alcopops
, tobacco and electronic cigarettes, gambling. (3) In England, 1 in 8 children in the 11-16 age group follow at least one gambling provider on social media. Also because of gambling advertising at sporting events, which is rarely subject to foreclosure.
‘ Industry self-regulation has failed. Studies in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the United States-among many others-have shown that self-regulation has not curbed the ability of businesses to advertise to children.
In Australia for example, although companies have signed a self-regulation on advertising, in just one year of sports-related television programs-football, cricket and rugby-child and teen viewers were still exposed to 51 million alcohol advertisements. And the reality may be even worse: we have little data on the huge expansion of social media advertising and algorithms directed at our children’ (Prof. Anthony Costello, co-author of the report under review).
Climate emergency and agrotoxics, the first victims
The future of childhood is also threatened by the climate emergency, the current impact of which on the environment and populations is described in the latest reports by theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and theWorld Metereological Organization (WMO). (4) Unicef has already denounced – in the very recent
Call for Humanitarian Action for Children 2020
– how children are the first victims of the various phenomena associated with wars, natural disasters and climate change.
‘If global warming should exceed 4°C between now and 2100, in line with current projections, this would lead to devastating consequences for childhood health due to rising ocean levels, heat waves, proliferation of diseases such as malaria or dengue fever, and malnutrition.’
The Lancet‘s Eat Commission. after all, in sounding the alarm about the ongoing Global Syndemic in 2019, he identified its three triggers precisely in climate change, malnutrition and obesity. It all adds up, in the various international agency reports cited in the narrative. But nothing changes, at least so far.
Agrotoxics have also been called out as an alarming cause of malformations and incurable diseases in children in a 2018 Unicef report. As well as in an earlier report by the Special Rapporteur to the UN on the Right to Food, Hilal Elver, in 2017. But again, little or nothing changes in international policy decisions. (5)
Climate change and inequality
More advanced economies provide better living conditions for their children, but at the same time endanger the future of children around the world by contributing substantially to climate change. Not only through air pollution but also through neo-colonial practices, well described in the book ‘SOS Environment’ by Manlio Dinucci. Fomenting deforestation and biodiversity loss instead of halting it, for example, in global palm oil and GMO soybean supply chains.
‘Europe offers the best “home” on the planet to a child born today, but fails when it comes to guaranteeing him a sustainable future.’
The UNICEF report on children’s futures compiles a global ranking of 180 states, comparing their performance in overall child development, environmental and economic sustainability. If the poorest countries must do more to ensure healthy lives, education and food for their children, among the richest countries they must bring down per capita CO2 emission levels. Since the richer they are, the more they continue to pollute.
‘Italy ranks 26th out of 180 in the indicator on child survival and well-being, while it is only 134th in sustainability. At 5.99 tons per capita per year, we emit 121% more CO2 than the 2030 target’ (Francesco Samengo, president of Unicef Italy).
Children and inequality
‘250 million children under 5 years old ‘ living in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their full development potential, according to indicators on chronic malnutrition and poverty. But even more worrying is the fact that every child on the planet today faces real dangers to their future from climate change and trade pressures.
States must review their approach to child and adolescent health to ensure that we not only care for our children in the present, but protect the world they will inherit in the future.’ (Helen Clark, former New Zealand premier and co-chair of the report writing committee in footnote 1).
Inequalities between and within countries are the most serious social scourge of modern civilization. They are central to at least 9 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in UN Agenda 2030 and yet they continue to increase rather than regress. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child has turned 30 years old, and child exploitation continues in Big Food supply chains as well, under the watchful eyes of all those who do not allow themselves to be beguiled by their influencers (or sponsored by principals). But the attention of politics and social partners, even in Europe, seems to be focused only on trillion-dollar investments on mega-industrial plants. (6)
What about the #children? #Égalité!
Dario Dongo and Sabrina Bergamini
Notes
(1) Unicef (2020).
UNICEF-WHO-Lancet report: global child health at risk.
. Original text, A future for the world’s children? A WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission.
(2) The vulnerability of minors to the marketing of junk food and alcohol has also been denounced by the European Parliament, but without getting feedback from the Commission. V. https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/mercati/pubblicità-di-cibo-spazzatura-e-alcolici-nessuna-tutela-per-i-bambini-in-ue
(3) Junk food addiction was evaluated in a recent scientific study already cited by this site, at https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/sicurezza/alimenti-ultra-processati-e-dipendenza-da-cibo-studio-scientifico. On e-cigarette addiction see Richard Miech et al. (2019). Trends in Adolescent Vaping, 2017-2019.
(4) TheIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report 8.8.19 on climate change, summarized at https://www.egalite.org/land-grabbing-e-cambiamento-climatico-il-rapporto-ipcc/. World Metereological Organization (WMO) report 22.9.19 on global warming, at https://www.egalite.org/riscaldamento-globale-il-rapporto-wmo/
(5) Neurotoxic neonicotinoid pesticides are still used with few or no limits in a hundred countries around the globe (see https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade .it/sicurezza/neonicotinoidi-inchiesta-sulle-lobby-dei-pesticidi). Nor has policy in Europe reacted to reports of scientific fraud hiding the genotoxic and carcinogenic dangers associated with glyphosate exposure (see https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade .it/sicurezza/glifosato-altre-frodi-negli-studi-scientifici-prodotti-dalle-corporation, https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/consum-attori/glifosato-gli-studi-falsi-usati-da-bayer-per-il-rinnovo-dell-autorizzazione)
(6) The European Green Deal, at a glance, at https://www.egalite.org/european-green-deal-la-nuova-strategia-in-ue/. For the Farm to Fork (f2f) strategy, see https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/idee/farm-to-fork-la-strategia-annunciata-a-bruxelles
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
Journalist. Consumption, rights, nutrition, social, environment. Head of Consumers Help. She collaborated with ResetDOC, Il Riformista, La Nuova Ecologia, IMGPress.
