junk food ads dense in school zone
Kids are being bombarded with hundreds of ads for alcohol and junk food in the streets around their schools, helping to drive the obesity epidemic in young Australians.
Weight specialists are calling for geographic marketing bans for certain products on the back of new findings showing rates of unhealthy advertising are five times higher in school zones.
Almost 2,290 food advertisements were spotted within a 500-metre radius of 40 schools in Sydney and nearby Wollongong.
About 80 per cent of the ads were for unhealthy foods deemed to be energy dense and low in nutrients.
Unhealthy ads were most common in the immediate area around each school, said Bridget Kelly from the NSW Centre for Overweight and Obesity at the University of Sydney.
"Advertising is known to influence children's food choices," Ms Kelly said.
"These advertisements challenge healthy-eating messages and they could potentially contribute to poor diets."
Childhood obesity is emerging as a public health crisis in Australia, with about a quarter of boys and girls carrying more than a healthy amount of weight. Studies show bad diets and a lack of exercise are fuelling the epidemic.
The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, found the most common food ads were for sugar-sweetened drinks and coffee, but even more concerning were the extremely high number of alcohol ads.
"Alcoholic beverages were the single most advertised product within a 250-metre radius of primary schools," Ms Kelly said.
"This may be especially influential because of children's repetitive exposure to these advertisements."
The heavy exposure called for policy intervention at a local, state or federal level that creates advertising "green zones" around schools similar to those implemented in the US city of Boston and across Korea, Ms Kelly said.
However, she acknowledged such a move would be unpopular among retailers and would require more debate.
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