Day 031 - 05 Oct 94 - Page 41
1 cent; soft drinks 6.7 per cent; meat products, that is
2 sausages and the like, 6.3 per cent and puddings and ice
3 cream, in this case, 2.1 per cent.
4
5 When you add that proportion up and leaving the meat out,
6 because one is not saying that meat is necessarily in the
7 category that I am about to describe, when you add that
8 up, you come to approximately 50 per cent of the energy is
9 coming from sorts of foods which are, if you like, very
10 much in the popular domain of children's advertising time,
11 the chips, the confectionery, the ice creams and the
12 things of that sort.
13
14 I think that is disturbing because it suggests that the
15 children are responding to pressures that are coming
16 through to them via the media. One would be surprised if
17 the media was not actually spending its money on the sort
18 of advertisements of television time exposed to children
19 without expecting some kind of rewards from it. But it
20 does look as though the effects of this kind of thing, if
21 I am right in that assumption that there is a link between
22 the media exposure of these children to this type of food,
23 that a disproportionate amount of their energy is coming
24 from that sector of those food groups which are probably
25 about the least nourishing.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You really feel able to draw that
28 conclusion, do you?
29 A. Well, I -----
30
31 Q. I mean, I have to say that we did not have a television in
32 my household until I was about 13 or 14 years of age. I
33 cannot remember when advertising was allowed on
34 television; it was not until some years after that. But
35 everyone loved chips and sweets and preferred white bread
36 to brown when they were young.
37 A. Yes, I will accept that there is -- one would like to
38 know a great deal more about this data, your Lordship. We
39 are talking here about the low socioeconomic children of
40 Hackney. Despite the lower socioeconomic activity of
41 these households, they quite often have the SKY television
42 discs as well as their conventional television sets.
43 There is no doubt that these children are being exposed to
44 a considerable amount of pressure to eat this collection
45 of foods. But I would not like to be able to put a hard
46 figure on what proportion of that food choice or selection
47 is associated or directly simulated by television
48 exposure, but I believe the London Food Commission is
49 currently conducting a survey on this.
50
51 It is my impression from talking to them that they think
52 there is a real connection between food choice in children
53 and also in Borthwick's, a company has recently circulated
54 a publication in which it has described the success of
55 what it calls "pester power". "Pester power" is the power
56 of children to persuade their parents to buy X, Y and Z,
57 and Borthwick's actual circular which is sending around
58 the industry (which I have seen) is actually describing
59 the virtues of pester power, of directing television
60 images at children to persuade their parents to buy this,
