As a child growing up, I was no different to the children of today. I also fell for marketing. I wanted the snack and drink products that had the eye-catching posters up by the school canteen. I participated in the marketing campaigns to win a free hamper filled with unhealthy products…The sugary drinks, the extra salty snacks, the addictive cheesy snacks. As an elite athlete, you would think I would know better, but I didn’t and I still fell prey.
Now that I have grown into adulthood and my career, my eyes have been opened, and I don’t want the children of today to fall prey to the same marketing strategies I experienced when I was a child.
We must remember that For-Profit companies (of which many if not all food and beverage companies are) have one goal, PROFIT. They do this by increasing their sales, gaining more consumers, creating a loyal customer base and creating an artificial desire for their product. What better way to achieve this than by indoctrinating a never ending customer base?
Every year, new potential consumers are born and companies prey on this. Every new cohort of students are new consumers to purchase their products. Marketing strategies are carefully curated to influence consumer behaviour. Every Ad, every sign, every post on social media, every sponsorship at a school event, every branding on school products is geared towards changing consumer behaviour by driving engagement and sales. Adults are easily influenced by these actions. How can we expect children and teenagers to be immune to it?
Childhood and adolescence is a crucial period where tastes, preferences and norms are formed. This means that having unhealthy food marketing in and around schools slowly influences these. Marketing creates the illusion of choice. When I say, “our choices are not our own”, I mean that we think the food choices we make are out of our own volition, however this can’t be further from the reality. What really happens is that our food choices are shaped by the food environment in which we live, which is “the collective physical, economic, policy, and sociocultural surroundings, opportunities, and conditions that influence people’s food and beverage choices and nutritional status”. It is also shaped by the marketing of food and beverages companies. We do not make our food and beverage choices in the vacuum, and no one is immune to being influenced.
It manipulates our subconscious and encourages us to continue to purchase and consume their products, artificially creating demand and again creating the illusion that the choices we are making are our own. This is true for adults and definitely true for children and adolescents. Children and adolescents are more likely to be influenced by branding, promotions and incentives. It subtly influences their preferences and taste. The phenomenon of FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out) is something that many children and teenagers experience. I’m sure I’m not the only one who as a teenager craved something because it was trendy at the time.
A school should be a safe haven, a place where we are nurturing our nation’s youth to grow and develop into healthy, educated and well-functioning adults. By allowing these companies to promote their unhealthy healthy products within and around schools, we have broken that safe haven seal.
I didn’t know it back then as a child in primary school or a teenager in secondary school, but I know it now as an adult working in the field of public health. I know that these pervasive marketing strategies by unhealthy food and beverage companies adds to the creation of an obesogenic environment (which is an environment that promotes obesity). Childhood overweight and obesity is a major problem here in Barbados and by extension the wider Caribbean. An unhealthy diet is one of the biggest risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and here in Barbados, diet-related NCDs like diabetes, hypertension and some cancers are on the rise.
As a public health professional now, I know it’s not about just telling kids to eat healthier… it’s not that simple. We know that our choices are not our own…it’s influenced, guided and shaped by the food environment, thus we have to ensure that the school food environment is a protected one, so that the healthy choice is the default choice.
It’s time we say “Enough! If it harms our children’s health, it must be regulated”
Stephanie Whiteman is an Assistant Lecturer in Public Health at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill and a PhD candidate at the same institution. She is also a Vital Strategies Healthy Food Policy Fellow and member of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition.