Regulating Food Marketing To Children Essay

4.0 Regulating food marketing to children and its effectiveness

The approaches suggested by governments, food companies and advocacy groups to limit the effects of marketing on children presents a wide spectrum of diversity and inconsistency across the world (Harris et al., 2009b). They are varies from very strict regulations such as banning of TV advertisements targeting children below 12nyears in Sweden & Norway to non-existence of any such regulations in many Asian countries (MUFCE,2004). However, the need of protecting children from harmful food marketing is a widely accepted concept all over the world. The approaches to combat this situation can be categorised based on several dimensions. Harris et al. (2009b) presented range of such approaches according to their relative power and capacity of making- sanctions. The evolution starts initially in the individual and family level with a responsibility to develop into single corporation, this can be formed towards trade associations and then into government level and international regulations (Harris et al., 2009b).

In the governance level, legislation documents such as consumer protection acts, the acts on media operations have been used to control market operations. Finland provide example of actions taken to control commercial

The drafted principles referred to as ‘Sydney principles’ which was developed based on right based approach has been widely disseminated and accepted. These principles should; 1. Support to children rights, 2. Ensure protection of children, 3. Be statutory 4. Cover wide commercial promotion, 5. Ensure no profit oriented childhood settings, 6. Consist of international media and 7. Be evaluated and monitored (Swinburn et al.,