No More Fast Food Marketing For Children?

Singapore - Following in the footsteps of countries such as Norway and Sweden which have banned unhealthy food advertising to children, local authorities are mulling a similar move, beginning a public consultation exercise next month.

According to a release from the Health Promotion Board(HPB), evidence has shown that advertising influences children's food preferences, purchase requests or consumption patterns.

The Ministry of Health and the HPB is hence reviewing the need to strengthen standards for advertising of food and beverage products high in fat, sugar or salt to children. An online public consultation exercise to put these measures in place will begin in November this year, aimed at gathering public feedback for the development of the these new guidelines.

When asked if this would affect fast food brands and their advertising activities, director of corporate marketing and communications Vernon Vasu told Marketing that nothing had yet been confirmed as of now in terms of regulations, but that the new restrictions would not target any specific brand.

"The intention is to target marketing on foods high in salt and fat during children's programmes," he said, adding that he was unable to comment further on developments.

This follows a global movement by the World Health Organisation for implementing the set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children.

Markets such as Quebec, Norway and Sweden have already effected a ban, while the United Kingdom and South Korea have statutory regulations restricting food advertising. Finland and Denmark have also introduced guidelines in this area.

In Malaysia, fast-food advertisements were banned from children's TV programmes and fast-food advertisers were not allowed to sponsor children's TV programmes in 2008 and last year, it renewed these guidelines to extend to all areas of marketing including event and online executions.