Junk food advertising causing ‘tsunami’ of chronic disease

Independent MP Sophie Scamps is pushing for the federal government to impose restrictions on junk food advertising directed at children.

Jeremy Marks, who lost 30kg by limiting starchy foods, with his wife Lisa and their sons Freddie, 2, and Harvey, 4 at their Melbourne home. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

Independent MP Sophie Scamps is pushing for the federal government to impose restrictions on junk food advertising directed at children, as health groups and food sector leaders prepare to meet for an obesity roundtable this week.

Dr Scamps, a GP on Sydney’s northern beaches, is drafting a private members bill to tackle the nation’s obesity epidemic by clamping down on the rampant advertising of junk food and sugary snacks to children and will sit down with industry leaders on Friday to discuss the proposal.

It comes after the federal government commissioned a review of the national clinical treatment guidelines for overweight and obesity, with a shift away from weight control being “primarily the responsibility of the individual”.

The guidelines review will examine the risks and benefits of new weight loss drugs, and examine a suite of dietary approaches including low-carb diets and intermittent fasting.

The new guidelines are expected to acknowledge that the trappings of modern society make it ­extremely challenging for people to control their weight, and challenge the long peddled advice to just “eat less, move more” as insufficient.

As clinical treatment methods are reviewed, the Albanese government is coming under mounting pressure to consider stronger regulation to help prevent obesity, an enormous public health issue in Australia, with 67 per cent of adults overweight or obese and one in four children.

Independent MP Sophie Scamps. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

Dr Scamps is targeting the widespread and unchecked marketing of unhealthy foods as a key obesity prevention measure, arguing that children are bombarded from all sides by advertising including on TV, social media and the supermarket checkout.

“It is about starting this conversation about how our children are being targeted by these junk food companies and it’s predatory as well – it’s everywhere in the supermarket, on our TVs, on our social media, people are just saturated with advertising,” she said.

“And it’s very hard to resist and I think for a long while the sugar industry, the junk food industry, have tried to shift the blame to the individual, and put the onus on the individual.

“But it’s not. It’s a societal wide problem – when you have one out of three Australians being overweight or obese, it’s not an individual problem.”

Dr Scamps said the nation’s obesity public policy had been “absolutely neglected” compared to other public health issues such as smoking related cancers, considering that obesity was also linked to higher risks of disease including heart disease, stroke, cancer and type 2 diabetes.

“As a comparison, we see what the attention has been like for tobacco and smoking and there’s been a lot of fantastic attention on that and some really good public health interventions that have been very successful,” she said.

Public Health Association of Australia chief executive Terry Slevin, who will attend Friday’s roundtable, also backs the prevention approach to tackling obesity, arguing that there is no “magic bullet” solution, as weight loss drugs such as Ozempic continue to gain popularity.

“Obesity is one of those wicked public health challenges that we know is never going to be fixed overnight, and it’s never going to be fixed with a single magic bullet,” he said.

“It’s a complex web of drivers and influencing the increasing body weight of people who live in Australia and it is undoubtedly a significant public health problem, which is contributing to a slow-moving tsunami of chronic disease.”

Adjunct Professor Slevin said controls on processed food advertising were “insufficient” because governments were “reluctant” to regulate.

“Governments always prefer self regulation, because it’s easier, and they don’t have to make hard decisions,” he said.

Public Health Association of Australia chief executive Terry Slevin. Picture: Supplied

Professor Slevin said he broadly opposed the possibility that weight loss drugs such as Ozempic, which has become increasingly popular and divided the medical community, should be used to fight obesity.

“In the same way that there’s no magic bullet to stop obesity, there’s no magic pill to fix obesity,” he said. “There’s always an anxiety that a pharmaceutical solution can resolve a public health failure.

“And that’s not a dynamic that would I suspect to be welcomed by anybody, and I suspect probably would ultimately turn out to be a poor result to the health of people of Australia.”

As public health bodies push for government regulation and prevention, some individuals are rejecting the advice contained in mainstream dietary guidelines and turning to low-carb diets, which have proven effective for many thousands of people in reversing type 2 diabetes, a major complication of obesity.

Melbourne-based father-of-two Jeremy Marks lost 30kg through focusing on eating more protein and limiting starchy foods. The 36-year-old had previously tried calorie restriction, intense exercise and intermittent fasting to shed the extra kilos.

“It’s life-changing and I’m super proud of what I’ve achieved,“ Mr Marks said. “I genuinely believe in the science of it and I think it’s the future of where diets should be.”