“We have regulated tobacco, we have regulated alcohol, when will there be clear and clear regulation on food marketing for all these ultra-processed products?” asks Boris Hansel, head of the Preventive Nutrition unit from the Bichat Hospital in Paris.
“I’m talking about aggression“, protested Wednesday September 13 on franceinfo Professor Boris Hansel, nutritionist and head of the Nutrition Prevention unit at Bichat hospital. He is not “not surprised” of the results of the Foodwatch survey published this Wednesday. The non-governmental consumer defense organization scrutinized 228 drinks and foods for children.
>> Junk food: Foodwatch denounces marketing aimed at children in a survey
According to its survey, 9 out of 10 products should not be marketed to children. The NGO assures that these products are too fatty or too sweet, compared to the nutritional recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). She denounces a “junk food marketing“and asks for supervision of these”harmful practices“.
Professor Boris Hansel repeats that it is “aggressive marketing” Who “contributes to the worsening of the health situation when we focus on obesity“He calls on the public authorities to take up the subject.”We have regulated tobacco, we have regulated alcohol, when will there be clear and clear regulation on food marketing for all these ultra-processed products?” he asks.
franceinfo: Do the results of this survey surprise you?
Boris Hansel: I am not surprised. What is interesting is to have quantified things. You just have to turn on your television, look on the Internet or at food packaging, to realize that there is aggressive marketing. I’m talking about aggression towards our young audiences and then also towards adults. It’s obvious that it works, otherwise they [les industriels] wouldn’t do it. But the problem is simple: we do not regulate, we do not control even though we know the consequences of this type of diet. We have regulated tobacco, we have regulated alcohol, when will there be clear and clear regulation on food marketing for all these ultra-processed products? Obviously, we should not put alcohol and tobacco on the same level either. There are many differences, but we know that this marketing contributes to the worsening of the health situation when we focus on obesity.
We all know the brands we talk about, they are part of our daily lives. Should we regulate advertising or should we ask these food manufacturers to change recipes?
There is not one solution that will fix this problem. Everything is good to take. Encouraging manufacturers to change recipes is what Nutri-Score does in particular. I’m one of those people who thinks it should be mandatory. It has its drawbacks too. But there is a fact: this leads a certain number of industrialists to improve revenues, but that will not be enough! Secondly, for advertising, it is not new, the WHO [l’Organisation mondiale de la santé] gave directives for countries to adopt public health policies to reduce this marketing aggression, particularly towards children and adolescents.
But there have been campaigns like the one that says you should eat five fruits and vegetables a day. It’s not sufficient ?
It’s always good to take again. But you put a child or even an adult in front of an advertisement with a super cereal that will make you become a superhero. It lasts 30 seconds. Then, we say very quickly, we tell you: “for your health, avoid eating too fatty, too sweet, too salty”. It’s written in white, very small. This little sentence with a message that ultimately tells you ‘go on a diet’, excuse me, but it doesn’t make the cut.
The problem is that on the one hand, you have millions, maybe billions of euros which are devoted to this aggressive marketing and on the other hand, we have campaigns [de prévention] barely funded from time to time. And today, on the one hand, you have “normal food”, that is ultra-processed food and on the other hand, eating fruits, vegetables, raw products, it has become a diet food.
“Marketers could make us want to eat broccoli or spinach, if they wanted to.”
Boris Hansel, nutritionistat franceinfo
I’m not saying that we don’t have the right to eat everything there is in the supermarket. What I mean is that there is a disproportion between the marketing investment in these products and no investment in marketing for a normal diet and once again, I am not talking about diet food. . Caricaturing broccoli as a diet food is what these ads, this aggressive marketing, have resulted in. I believe that prevention remains the key to avoiding the worsening of this catastrophic situation for children and adults.