Spanish ban on advertising on public TV (10/08/2009)
WFA research shows insight into global audience measurement (31/07/2009)
Contagious: "The rise of own brands" (31/07/2009)
Bing to power Yahoo! as part of global search deal (31/07/2009)
BRICs well-placed for economic recovery (28/07/2009)
UK Government presents new Obesity Strategy
Date: 25/01/2008
On 23 January, the Secretary of State for Health, Rt Hon Alan Johnson (Lab), presented the new government strategy to face the issue of rising obesity trends in England to the House of Commons. "Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives: a Cross-Government Strategy for England" is based on the findings of the Foresight Report.
The Strategy focuses on five main policy areas, notably promoting children's health, promoting healthy food, building physical activity into our lives, supporting health at work and providing incentives more widely to promote health, and providing effective treatment and support when people become overweight or obese.
The official objective of the Strategy is for England to be "the first major country to reverse the rising tide of obesity and overweight in the population by ensuring that all individuals are able to maintain a healthy weight. Our initial focus is on children: by 2020 we will have reduced the proportion of overweight and obese children to 2000 levels."
The Department of Health committed to publish annually¸ with the support of a panel of experts, assessment reports "of the progress made in halting and then turning around the rise in excess weight, including leading indicators of behaviour change, such as breastfeeding rates, food consumption, rates of physical activity and children's health."
Three streams of action are expected to have a potential impact on commercial communications aimed at children:
1. The finalisation of a Healthy Food Code of Good Practice, in partnership with the food and drink industry, and other relevant stakeholders. This code would challenge the whole industry to adopt practices to reduce consumption of saturated fat, sugar and salt among other measures.
2. The request for Ofcom to bring forward its review of restrictions on the advertising of unhealthy foods to children, to begin in July 2008 and report early findings as soon as possible, likely in September 2008.
3. The promotion of flexibilities within planning regulations, so that local authorities are able to manage the proliferation of fast food outlets in particular areas, e.g. near parks or schools.
Source: The Advertising Education Forum
WFA members can request a full copy of the "Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives: a Cross-Government Strategy for England" from [email protected]
WFA will address the new Obesity Strategy at the next meeting of the Responsible Advertising and Children Programme on February 12th. The Strategy does not explicitly mention further advertising restrictions. However, in bringing forward the date of the Ofcom review, it opens the possibility for further discussions about the potential of a pre-watershed ban. The Strategy also puts added focus on the review of the existing ASA codes and brand communications through company-owned websites.
