“We must put an end to the advertising bombardment of junk food manufacturers on our children”

2023-10-28 09:00:12

Being the country of gastronomy does not protect France from the global obesity epidemic. Deaf to repeated calls to regulate the marketing of junk food which targets children, the government has in recent years been content to trust manufacturers who promise to limit the exposure of young people to products that are too fatty, too sweet, too salty. . Serious error.

Today, in France, the situation is no longer tenable: 17% of children and adolescents are overweight or obeseand 50 to 70% of them will remain so into adulthood. However, we know that overweight and obesity increase the risks of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver syndrome and even the risks of cancer. One child in six is ​​a future patient, it’s almost written.

So what to do? We must put an end to the advertising bombardment of junk food manufacturers on our children. The experts – Public Health France, Inserm, High Council for Public Health, Court of Auditors, and even Unicef ​​– are unanimous: beyond awareness campaigns and messages of the type “eat, move”it is essential to attack the problem at the root, to protect young people from this current overexposure, by regulating marketing and advertising that targets children for products that are too sweet, too fatty or too salty.

An obesogenic environment

This proposal is not new, but it has been swept under the rug for too long. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been warning for around ten years: “Childhood obesity and the marketing of unhealthy products are among the major concerns, digital marketing for these products is a new public health challenge that must be urgently combated. »

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In France, going against the grain of these clear recommendations, the government – ​​like its predecessors – has refused on at least five occasions to act in recent years, even though this framework was possible in the EGalim law (2018), in several proposals parliamentarians on industrial food or junk food, in the reform of public broadcasting (2020), in the Climate and resilience law (2021) and recently in the law governing the excesses of influencers (2023).

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While our leaders rely on the voluntary commitments of manufacturers, which absolutely do not respond to the public health emergency, and despite the numerous alerts and proposals formulated by consumer associations, our children are growing up in an obesogenic environment. And their parents cannot under any circumstances control everything and bear sole responsibility for the proliferation of media channels and the explosion of social networks.

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