Popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram fail to protect children from the marketing tactics of junk food advertisers. This needs to change.
We surveyed over 100 Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and independent stores around Australia and found supermarkets are promoting unhealthy food much more often, and more prominently, than healthier products.
The teenage brain has a voracious drive for reward, diminished behavioural control and a susceptibility to be shaped by experience. This often manifests as a reduced ability to resist high-calorie junk foods.
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Excessively eating junk foods during adolescence could alter brain development, leading to lasting poor diet habits. But, like a muscle, the brain can be exercised to improve willpower.
Lobbyists try to water down policies that could restrict the public’s access to their harmful products.
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The steady flow of politicians and government staffers switching sides to lobby for powerful food, alcohol and gambling companies is a threat to public health.
Bill Maher suggests that fat-shaming may help people lose weight.
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Fat-shaming is as ineffective as it is cruel. The bullying tactic also ignores the biological factors underlying obesity, which are not always under a person’s control.
To understand how healthy a food is, we often look at fats and proteins, vitamins and minerals. But this approach overlooks one property that’s a key part of a food’s health potential – its structure.
One of the lesser-known effects of a poor diet: blindness.
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Our new study finds in Australian supermarkets, the lower the health star rating, the higher the discounts. The time is ripe for a national conversation about making discounts healthier.
Modifying the types of food available to young adults can impact on their dietary behaviour.
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Rajshri Roy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Students gain up to 4kg in their first year at university and all the junk food on campus doesn’t help. Universities have a responsibility to make healthier foods available to students.
Obesity among kids in Australia needs to be treated as a serious health problem.
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If any other condition affected as many children and contributed to as many long-term health problems as obesity does, we would have had an action plan long ago. But it’s not too late to start.
Brightly coloured, strategically placed. No wonder parents and kids can have a tough time saying “no” to sugary snacks.
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The mixed messages around children, food and weight - not to mention sophisticated marketing - can leave parents perplexed. But there are ways to wade through it all and find healthy choices.
Food education takes place in preschools, primary schools and secondary schools, though in different ways and to different degrees.
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Social media platforms can identify children who are most interested in or vulnerable to junk food and its advertising.
In a supermarket candy and cookie aisle. October 31, France adopted the NutriScore, a labelling system designed to inform consumers about the nutritional value of food choices.
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France recently adopted NutriScore, a series of simple colour codes that will allow consumers to easily identify the healthiest foods. But some of the biggest food conglomerates are fighting back.
Over 90 per cent of food and beverage product ads viewed by children and youth online are for unhealthy food products.
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New data on soaring child obesity should not come as a surprise. The food industry spends billions marketing unhealthy foods in a global society where over-eating is seen as a character flaw.
Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sustainability, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering & Built Environment, Deakin University