Popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram fail to protect children from the marketing tactics of junk food advertisers. This needs to change.
We surveyed over 100 Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and independent stores around Australia and found supermarkets are promoting unhealthy food much more often, and more prominently, than healthier products.
Excessively eating junk foods during adolescence could alter brain development, leading to lasting poor diet habits. But, like a muscle, the brain can be exercised to improve willpower.
The steady flow of politicians and government staffers switching sides to lobby for powerful food, alcohol and gambling companies is a threat to public health.
Fat-shaming is as ineffective as it is cruel. The bullying tactic also ignores the biological factors underlying obesity, which are not always under a person’s control.
To understand how healthy a food is, we often look at fats and proteins, vitamins and minerals. But this approach overlooks one property that’s a key part of a food’s health potential – its structure.
Our new study finds in Australian supermarkets, the lower the health star rating, the higher the discounts. The time is ripe for a national conversation about making discounts healthier.
Rajshri Roy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Students gain up to 4kg in their first year at university and all the junk food on campus doesn’t help. Universities have a responsibility to make healthier foods available to students.
If any other condition affected as many children and contributed to as many long-term health problems as obesity does, we would have had an action plan long ago. But it’s not too late to start.
The mixed messages around children, food and weight - not to mention sophisticated marketing - can leave parents perplexed. But there are ways to wade through it all and find healthy choices.
France recently adopted NutriScore, a series of simple colour codes that will allow consumers to easily identify the healthiest foods. But some of the biggest food conglomerates are fighting back.
New data on soaring child obesity should not come as a surprise. The food industry spends billions marketing unhealthy foods in a global society where over-eating is seen as a character flaw.
Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sustainability, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering & Built Environment, Deakin University