Obesity costing Western Australia $340 million per year

News. com. au 
Obesity is costing Western Australia’s health system close to $340 million a year, with experts renewing calls for a ban on junk food advertising. A report by WA’s Department of Health finds that health conditions related to excess body mass were responsible for 9.3 per cent of all hospitalizations in 2016. The report projects that by 2026, such hospitalizations will have risen by 54 per cent – and the costs to the health system increased to $610 million – unless the problem is addressed.  Read the article here

Kellogg’s pulls Pringles ad from Joe Wicks ‘PE with Joe’ YouTube show

The Guardian 
At the height of lockdown in April, a “pre-programme” ad for Pringles appeared to an unspecified number of the hundreds of thousands of children (and their parents) who tune in to PE with Joe exercise sessions online every weekday morning. Barbara Crowther, Children’s Food Campaign spokeswoman, said: “Placing this ad directly before Joe’s hugely popular children’s daily PE class is a total betrayal of his work, and highly insensitive, irresponsible marketing. Children don’t need more salt, more saturated fat, more sugar, more excess calories being pushed to them during a pandemic, or indeed at any time.” Read the article here

Action on Sugar says UK’s oral health likely to worsen following COVID-19

Dentistry Online 

Katharine Jenner, nutritionist and campaign director at Action on Sugar, said COVID-19 could mean certain risk factors lead to worse oral health outcomes. The UK based campaign group said COVID-19 has led to popular companies heavily advertising unhealthy food and drink products – but little has been done to curb it. This follows the delay of a report on sugar reduction within the confectionary sector, which has been held up as a result of the pandemic. Progress by manufacturers has stalled against the Public Health England set target of 20% in voluntary cuts by 2020. Read the article here

Covid-19 school closings may spur childhood obesity, experts warn

The Washington Post 

Childhood obesity experts are worrying that children — who often gain weight during the summer when they’re home — will add even more pounds, escalating an already serious public health problem. “Weight gained each summer accumulates year after year since children don’t usually lose it when they return to school,” says Andrew Rundle, who heads the childhood obesity research project within the Columbia (University) Center for Children’s Environmental Health. Read the article here

Extra dip? Why advertising junk food must be strictly regulated

News 24 (South Africa) 

Evidence from South Africa’s tobacco control efforts indicates that exposure to junk foods through marketing can be reduced with legislation. Today smoking rates and exposure to tobacco through advertising and sponsorships have decreased significantly.   Similar to smoking, excess consumption of heavily marketed, highly processed, unhealthy food is associated with non-communicable diseases like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The use of legislation to create food environments that enable healthy diets is globally recognized as one of the approaches to reducing non-communicable diseases.  Read more here

 

Media literacy can improve child nutrition, family relationships

Washington State University Insider

A new study shows that building critical media skills as a family can have a positive impact on kids’ nutrition without restricting their access to TV and computers. The study, published in the journal Childhood Obesity, found that an education program that had parents and kids learn media literacy skills together not only helped children eat more fruits and vegetables but also improved communication between parents and their kids. Read more here

 

Coronavirus and obesity: Doctors take aim at food industry over poor diets

Food Navigator

A cardiologist has blamed the food industry for normalizing ultra-processed junk food as more evidence emerges that obesity is the biggest factor for death from Covid-19 in under 50s according to a new study from the US Center for Disease Control based on 99 countries and 14 states from March. You can read the article here

Federal Court Strikes Down Trump Administration School Nutrition Rollbacks

Center for Science in the Public Interest

In a critical victory, a federal court struck down a rule by the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Agriculture that rolled back nutrition standards on whole grains and sodium in school meals on the ground that the USDA failed to provide public notice of its plan to gut the standards. The Center for Science in the Public Interest and Healthy School Food Maryland brought the case in federal court in Maryland, represented by Democracy Forward.  Read the statement here.

COVID-19 pandemic may exacerbate childhood obesity

Science Daily 
Andrew Rundle, DrPH, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues expect that COVID-19-related school closures will double out-of-school time this year for many children in the U.S. and will exacerbate risk factors for weight gain associated with summer recess. Read the article here

See, Like, Share, Remember: Adolescents’ Responses to Unhealthy-, Healthy- and Non-Food Advertising in Social Media

MDPI

Advertisements for unhealthy food evoked significantly more positive responses from adolescents who were more likely to wish to ‘share’ unhealthy posts; rated peers more positively when they had unhealthy posts in their feeds; recalled and recognized a greater number of unhealthy food brands; and viewed unhealthy advertising posts for longer.  Read the study here