Heart and Stroke Foundation calls for restrictions on food, drink ads aimed at kids
TORONTO — The Heart and Stroke Foundation is calling on the federal government to restrict all marketing of foods and beverages aimed at children and teens, saying that high-volume promotional tactics are setting up young people for obesity and lifelong health problems.
The foundation wants to see limits placed on promotions of all food and drink products directed at young Canadians under age 17, including on television and the Internet.
A study commissioned by the foundation determined that collectively children are exposed to 25 million food and beverage ads a year on their top 10 favourite websites, and more than 90 per cent of products viewed by both kids and teens online are for products considered unhealthy because of high concentrations of sugar, fat or sodium.
“I was very shocked by the numbers because they were so high,” study author Monique Potvin Kent, an assistant professor in the school of epidemiology, public health and preventive medicine at the University of Ottawa, said of the exposure to web-based ads.