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Worrying yourself thin

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Mel Varley, Latest reporters' blogs January 23rd, 2008 by Melinda Varley

Children are still being bombarded with television advertisements for junk food, in spite of new rules aimed at tackling the UK’s obesity epidemic, but will we ever stop blaming advertisers?

Consumer organisation Which? called for a 9pm watershed ban on all ads advertising products that are high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS). Today (23 January) the government will confirm its decision to abandon plans to pass the pre-watershed ban through parliament, sparking further complaints for children’s groups.

Ofcom has stated that such a ban would have a “disproportionate” effect on the industry, costing as much as £211m in TV ad revenue.

Earlier this month, the Advertising Standards Authority produced its first compliance report into the content of food and drinks ads and found that companies were sticking to the rules.

Of the 759 ads monitored, just six, or 0.8 per cent, were found to breach the advertising codes - but none fell foul of the new food and drink ad restrictions.

So if the advertisers are complying with the rules, why are we still so fat, and getting fatter by the day?

A new report has suggested that outgoing people tend to be overweight, while anxious types are more likely to be thin – therefore it’s perhaps nothing to do with the ads, or what we’re eating.

More than 30,000 people aged between 40 and 64 were quizzed about their height and weight, and given a personality test for the study. 

The results showed that outgoing people were far more likely than other people to have a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25, a widely used indicator of whether you are overweight.

After taking into account other factors, such as smoking, men in the most extrovert category were 1.73 times more likely to be obese than their most introvert counterparts. Extrovert women were 1.53 times as likely to be obese.

People ranked as having the most anxious personalities were twice as likely as the least anxious to be underweight, or have a BMI of less than 18.5, the study found.

The point is, perhaps its not just advertising and junk food that makes a fatty?

To read the news story related to this blog go to mad.co.uk