Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - For four days in November this year, the movers and shakers of the country's advertising industry descended on the once-bucolic province of Camarines Sur (CamSur) for a non-stop bacchanalia that is called the Philippine Advertising Congress.
This year's industry gathering had a special mission handed to it by Philippine President Benigno Aquino III. At the induction of its current officers over lunch in presidential office earlier this year, Aquino seized the occasion to give them a strange assignment on how to encourage the news media to report more positive news and less negative news - by putting their advertising pesos (in the billions) where the positive news mouth is.
The ad industry has not responded. But there are more pressing issues the industry cannot, should not, ignore. Here's one:
Two epidemics are currently raging in poor countries - hunger and malnutrition and a more pernicious one, obesity, afflicting 42 million children under the age of five, 35 million of whom live in third-world countries like the Philippines.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for action to end the epidemic of child obesity by reducing marketing of unhealthy foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children.
WHO says children worldwide are exposed to marketing of foods high in fat, sugar or salt. And this increases the potential of younger generations developing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) during their lives.
Poor diet epidemic
WHO officials cite poor diet as one of the four common causes of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and chronic lung diseases, leading to more than nine million premature deaths.
Coordinator of the WHO surveillance and prevention program, Dr. Tim Armstrong, says obesity is a growing problem among children in the poorer countries.
NCDs now are the leading cause of death among adults in Samoa, and this is likely to get worse with alarming obesity among children.
WHO blames television advertising largely for the marketing of unhealthy foods. It says there is evidence advertisements influence children's food preferences, purchase requests and consumption patterns.
At the May 2010 World Health Assembly, member states endorsed a new set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children.
WHO says governments must lead this process through legislation restricting harmful marketing practices directed toward children.
UN debate
NCDs will be the focus of global health policy discussions this year, leading to a debate of heads of state at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Dr. Armstrong, who heads the WHO efforts on promoting healthy diet and physical education, told a news conference in January that while advertising junk food and drinks can encourage children to consume these, advertising can also promote a healthy diet, Reuters reported.
This led the WHO assembly last May to call on the UN health agency to draw up the marketing recommendations.
The WHO's 193 member states told it to work with the private sector as well as governments and civil society.
The recommendations aim to tackle both the frequency of advertising and its "power" for instance the use of cartoons that appeal to children.
Multinational compliance
WHO officials consulted leading companies in the sector - Coca-Cola, Mexico's Grupo Bimbo, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft, McDonald's, Mars, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever and the World Federation of Advertisers.
The companies agreed to draw up a code of conduct and committed not to market unhealthy products to children under the age of 12, Armstrong said.
In some markets, companies were living up to this pledge.
"There are other markets where perhaps companies are not adopting the same policies in terms of not advertising their products to children," he said.
Armstrong declined to name the companies or markets concerned but said the WHO had a sense that companies were not fulfilling their commitment in poor countries in the way that they appeared to be in developed markets.
The different results underlined the importance of governments monitoring the implementation of any agreements reached with the industry.
Like tobacco, liquor
"The concept is that governments must lead this process," he said. It was up to governments to choose the best approach.
Some might prefer to legislate a ban on advertising, others could agree independently monitored self-regulation with industry, he said.
Norway's director-general of health, Dr. Bjorn-Inge Larsen, said governments had a range of options and these recommendations were a first step.
Pressure on the companies to curb advertising and ultimately production of the products would grow in the same way as efforts to limit the consumption of tobacco and alcohol had done, he said.
Battling hidden hunger
Senator Edgardo J. Angara, a former president of the University of the Philippines and chair of the committee on education, says vegetables may be the answer to the hidden hunger that afflicts our severely malnourished children, who suffer stunted physical growth and, worse, irreversible brain damage.
It starts with what our children eat or, better yet, what they don't eat. He writes: "Scores of children are afflicted by a deficiency that could be resolved easily if more people paid attention.
"Approximately two billion people in the world suffer from hidden hunger, a dietary deficiency of essential micronutrients that could irreversibly affect physical and cognitive development.
Though food supplies are available, children from many developing countries continue to suffer from a lack of essential nutrients....
"The solution is so obvious: we need to make our children eat healthier food, especially fruits and vegetables. However, weaning children off junk food is a major challenge for any parent. Unhealthy eating is a major challenge for children in their growing years, when both physical and mental development (is) most critical...."
In the United States, a mother - with the support of an advocacy group like Angara's - has filed a class-action suit against a fast food chain, for its Happy Meal promotion which invites children to collect a new toy every so often.
The mother alleged, among other things, that the marketing promotion curtailed her right to be a good parent and to lead her child to a healthy nutritional adulthood.
Her lawyers questioned marketing promotions that target children. A fast food spokesperson said the promotion did not impair the consumer's right to choose. Columnists weighed in to advice mothers to "Just say No!" to the pester power of their children, even as companies seek to manipulate their impressionably young minds.
The legal arguments can go either way. In earlier cases involving the use by food manufacturers of potentially harmful trans-fats, a standard cooking ingredient in fast food kitchens, the companies settled out of court.
The government of New York has banned the use of trans-fats in all restaurants.
Former US President Bill Clinton is a celebrated example of how unhealthy eating habits can lead to heart problems caused by food hand-carried by White House intern Monica Lewinsky inside the Oval Office during the lunch break. Clinton underwent multiple heart bypass surgery after leaving office and now appears to be in the pink of health - older, perhaps, but wiser.
