Lets ditch the junk food ads on public transport

As a parent approaching the first ‘back to school’ week with my oldest child, the end of summer break is bittersweet.

It’s safe to say my partner and I are relieved we won’t parenting 24/7, but with our kids getting back ‘out there’, I know they, along with the thousands of students around New Zealand, will be confronted with a lot of cues to buy (or for mum and dad to buy) unhealthy food and drinks as they make their way to and from school by bus or train.

Our cities are saturated with junk food and drink ads, with numerous studies confirming how much they are in our kids’ faces as they go about their day.

Some local governments around the world – including London and Amsterdam – are making public transport an oasis in this context; one place where residents, including the young ones, get a break from harmful product promotion.

South Australia is the latest to join this movement, with health minister Chris Picton describing the move as a “sensible step towards a healthier South Australia”.

As a public health researcher, I’ve studied the environments around Auckland schools, and the results aren’t good.

Using Google Maps, my team virtually ‘walked’ the neighbourhoods surrounding nearly all of Auckland’s primary and intermediate schools and kura. We captured all the ads we could clearly see outside dairies and on bus stops and what we found was pretty shocking.

Of all the schools, 62 percent had visible advertising in these surrounding areas, and 83 percent of the food and drink ads promoted unhealthy products. Even more concerning, the density of junk food and drink ads (and outdoor advertising in general) in school zones was higher for schools in less advantaged neighbourhoods.

Auckland may be our biggest city, but this is an issue all over the country. A Wellington study that tracked what children view with body cameras found that children were exposed to unhealthy food and drink marketing 68 times per day – more than twice the amount of advertising for healthier products.

And the reason this matters? All this exposure to unhealthy food and drink marketing impacts children’s brand recognition and awareness, their attitudes and preferences about food, what products they intend to buy (and pester parents to buy), and their consumption patterns.

These foods contribute to several significant health problems for children including poor oral health, mental health and sleep, and excess weight.

For adults, food and drink marketing has become the wallpaper to our lives – we barely notice it. But kids are little sponges, taking in absolutely everything around them. I’m always surprised at what my five-year-old notices as we drive around (and what he overhears when I think he’s busy doing something else!). Younger kids don’t have the ability to tell the difference between marketing claims and facts – that judgment often doesn’t develop until they’re about 12 years old.

We need to protect children from early exposure to unhealthy food and drink promotion, and other harmful product marketing and this is simply not happening.

Our voluntary advertising codes, self-regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority, are virtually useless. The task of ensuring our children are protected from harmful marketing is being left to a profit-driven industry.

So, local governments of New Zealand: do something for our kids’ health by making our buses and trains junk food-free spaces, because:

• It’s an easy, low-cost measure that is relatively simple to implement through local councils and transport authorities
• While it won’t ‘fix’ our children’s nearly constant exposure to unhealthy ads, it can make a big difference
• There’s a blueprint to follow – other cities around the world have done it already

Following Transport for London’s ban on unhealthy food and drink advertising in 2019, researchers found a drop in residents’ household purchases of high-fat, sugar and salt foods – equivalent to a 6.7 percent reduction in calories. This was estimated to have resulted in:

• 95,000 (4.8 percent) fewer people with obesity.
• 2857 fewer cases of diabetes.
• 1915 fewer cases of cardiovascular disease.
• As a bonus, the study found an estimated £218 million would be saved in health system and social care costs over the lifetime of the current London population.

With local government elections coming later this year, we need to support candidates who will promise to act on this.

Let’s make this the year New Zealand cities catch up with other leading municipalities and take action.