Junk Food Marketing Needs Same Scrutiny as Tobacco

By Kisean Joseph

kisean.joseph@antiguaobserver.com

Youth advocate Janet Simon says unhealthy food marketing is conditioning children from a young age in ways society would never tolerate with tobacco or alcohol.

Simon, a youth advocate with Healthy Caribbean Youth, said preschools already restrict sugary snacks and drinks, but that standard disappears once children reach primary school.

“Preschool sets a foundation for young people,” Simon said. “Now, going into primary school, unfortunately, this is where we drop the ball. We allow outside influences because we must understand that conditioning is an important factor for our young people.”

She said easy access to unhealthy snacks around schools has left children so conditioned to sugar that they associate break time with junk food rather than nourishment.

“When you check what they’re really eating, for them, break, it’s not them having a sandwich or something wholesome to hold them until lunch,” Simon said. “Break is corn-curls, a soda, some fried chicken, tubes with sweets. Literally, almost anything unhealthy you can think of, the access is there. So they have been conditioned, and society has made it okay for this.”

Healthy Caribbean Coalition Communications Officer Sheena Warner-Edwards said the region has restricted marketing of harmful products before, and school food policy should follow the same path.

“You spoke about alcohol, you spoke about tobacco, so there was a time when those things were also allowed to be marketed freely,” Warner-Edwards said. “Various legislation had to be put in place to kind of restrict those products, especially where there is marketing to children. The same goes for our school policies.”

Warner-Edwards said Antigua and Barbuda is developing school nutrition policies similar to those already implemented in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, with discussions currently underway in St. Lucia. She cited early positive results in Barbados, where vendors near school gates have begun offering healthier options to students.