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UWA Business School
Professor Simone Pettigrew, from the UWA Business School, is passionate about improving public health. And with 62% of Australian adults and a quarter of Australian children either overweight or obese, she names obesity as one of the most critical issues currently facing our society.

If the trend continues, she says, the current generation of children will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. This is due to obesity's associated diseases - in particular, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

One of the most commonly blamed factors for childhood obesity is junk food advertising. Restrictions on advertising junk food to children are already in place in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden.

In Australia, the Greens' Protecting children from junk food advertising (Broadcasting Amendment) Bill 2008 was defeated, despite support from the Australian Psychological Society. One of the reasons was a lack of reliable Australian data showing the link between junk food advertising and children's eating habits.

In a new study jointly funded by the Cancer Council and Australian Research Council (ARC), Professor Pettigrew aims to fill this void.

The study will build on research conducted by former PhD student Michele Roberts, whose thesis was, says Pettigrew, ‘one of the first studies to measure both the direct and indirect effects of food advertising.'

Roberts developed a new model, allowing for the effects that advertising can have when mediated through parents and peers. This acknowledges that children, explains Pettigrew, are ‘factoring in the fact that the whole world around them is seeing the ad.'

These indirect effects can range from reinforcing advertising - such as schools teaching music jingles from junk food advertisements - to negating advertising, such as when the media reports on the policy debate surrounding the banning of junk food advertising.

Pettigrew's study will be looking to validate this new model with quantitative evidence. With the process of media monitoring having been completed, the next step in Pettigrew's study will be the holding of focus groups in July. Then, surveys will be conducted in shopping centres in WA, SA and NSW.

Nine hundred parents and children will be exposed to either a control image, or a print, television or online advertisement for a carefully-selected product. After taking into account other variables, the research team will aim to identify the advertisement's impact on the attitudes, beliefs and preferences of participants.

If the results show that advertisements have a strong influence on the attitudes of parents and children - in particular through the normalising of fast food, soft drinks, and confectionary - they will provide ammunition for many health groups in their pursuit of junk food advertising restrictions.

Currently, 97% of all food advertised to children contains unhealthy levels of fat, sugar or salt. Reducing this figure could, hypothesises Pettigrew, not only directly change children's perception of junk food, but also the perceptions of their peer groups and families.

So could restrictions on junk food advertising have a significant impact on childhood obesity rates? Do we need bans on junk food advertising? All of this will become clearer in the course of Pettigrew's groundbreaking research.

Media Contact
Heather Merritt
Director, External Relations
UWA Business School
T: +618 6488 8171
E: [email protected]

Verity Chia
Communications Officer
UWA Business School
E: [email protected]