Do we really want to be ruled by fatheads?

Abstract

Looks at the evidence from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK that marketing of junk foods is responsible for child obesity, and surveys the FSA website. Queries the soundness of the FSA’s claims to be authoritative in matters of food and healthy diet, focusing on the “comprehensive review of research“ which the FSA commissioned from the Centre for Social Marketing (CSM). Criticises the approach and methodology of the CSM report as being biased against advertising: for example, it ignores research which shows that advertising of alcohol has negligible effect on overall alcohol consumption, it uses loaded language, circularity of argument, unclear criteria for assessing the “relevance“ of the literature selected, and fails to explain why obesity is increasing when advertising on food brands is falling. Concludes that the taxpayer’s money is being wasted on such uninformative research.

Citation

Ambler, T. (2004), "Do we really want to be ruled by fatheads?", Young Consumers, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 25-28. https://doi.org/10.1108/17473610410814120