Restrict advertising - protect children
More efforts to prevent unhealthy eating habits would also be an important signal for Germany: The German Society of General Practice and Family Medicine (DEGAM) welcomes the British government's decision to restrict advertising for unhealthy foods in future. The aim is to reduce unhealthy eating, particularly among children and young people.
The UK is taking an important step to protect children in particular from unhealthy foods. From October 2025, advertising for certain foods will be banned on television during the day and online around the clock. The British government has presented a list of foods with a high fat, salt and sugar content (e.g. muffins, croissants, waffles, cookies, breakfast cereals, muesli bars, etc.) that are affected by the advertising ban. The aim is to prevent 20,000 cases of childhood obesity in the UK every year. DEGAM expressly welcomes this step.
"While Germany has been discussing the introduction of a sugar tax or advertising bans for sweets or other unhealthy foods for years without any results, the British are getting down to business," comments Prof. Dr. Martin Scherer, President of DEGAM. "As a scientific society, DEGAM has been pointing out for years that there is good evidence for broad-based elements of proportional prevention such as advertising bans or increased taxes to facilitate a healthy lifestyle. It is high time for Germany to finally catch up in the area of relationship prevention."
There is good international scientific evidence for the effectiveness of relationship prevention - i.e. strengthening prevention in people's living environments such as daycare centers, schools, neighborhoods and workplaces. Bans on advertising are a relationship prevention measure from which children and young people can also benefit across social barriers. "In any case, the evidence is strong enough to justify political reactions. It is absurd to prioritize economic interests over protecting generations of children from health risks. We should open up opportunities for children and adolescents and not close them off through early malnutrition," continued Martin Scherer.
DEGAM states that overweight and obesity in children and adolescents are on the rise. At the same time, it is known that important foundations for healthy behavior are laid in the early years. "Advertising that encourages children to consume excessive amounts of unhealthy foods harms them in the long term," adds Dr. Wolfgang Schneider-Rathert, spokesperson for the DEGAM Section on Prevention and a general practitioner in Lower Saxony. "Targeted advertising, which reaches children early in life several times a day in their magazines, on their cell phones and screens, has such a strong impact that the resulting obesity can only be partially treated successfully later on. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, we advocate changing the situation by banning advertising for junk food, as the behavior of overweight children and adolescents can hardly be changed later on."
Last year, DEGAM presented a position paper on the prevention and treatment of obesity in general practice: https://tinyurl.com/ycy9kxdz
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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