Dr. Norah Campbell:

I know the committee members have had a busy morning already so I am thankful for the time to contribute. I am an associate professor of marketing in Trinity College Dublin. I am here to tell committee members that foods with high levels of sugar, saturated fats and salt pose a physical threat to all children in Ireland.

Since 1992, Ireland has created strategies to mitigate the shift in weight of the entire population. Over that timeframe we have had five programmes for Government with obesity as a key challenge; four obesity national taskforces; four national frameworks, two ten-year national action plans; 13 reports on recommendations and progress; four national nutrition surveys; five sets of national nutrition guidelines; three policies; and four healthy eating strategies.

In that window of time, the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the country has increased. The reason for this is a category mistake. This food is now known to be a neurophysical threat to children. The marketing of this food online bypasses conscious choice and we need regulation to ban it entirely. I know the immediate thoughts of committee members. Is this not an excessive idea that will have a significant impact on employment? Surely, it is regressive? She cannot expect us to think that junk food is on a par with the horrific threats of child sex abuse or cyberbullying. Let me address each in turn briefly.

First, producers of junk food routinely invoke the threat of job losses or production relocation to delay policy intervention or dilute measures into voluntary codes or self-regulation, which categorically do not work. International research on the economic impact of sugar taxes show there is no evidence to support these claims.

The seeming threat of revenue loss needs to be balanced against the economic reality of obesity, which is estimated to cost €1.13 billion a year.

That we should have choice and liberty is a seductive argument. We all want a choice and liberty. The evidence is that parents want the ban on junk food marketing online to their children. Civil society wants it. I am here to tell the committee that a ban would actually be a relief to those working within the industry. It would relieve them of the strain of finding ways to circumvent vague, voluntary and self-regulated codes. We need to remember that every day these people are presented with an impossible job, to maximise shareholder value and reduce the propensity to eat. Removing online junk food advertising is not a closing down of choice; it stimulates innovation and makes room for genuinely new pathways of choice.

Cyberbullying and child sex abuse pose direct threats to individual children that are worse than the threat of food advertising online. However, the former affect a small number of individual children; the latter affects every child in Ireland. One in four children in Ireland is already suffering from obesity or is overweight. When something is happening to an entire population, we need what is called population-level intervention. This means basically changing the supply of food and the communication of this food. It is both the most difficult and the most effective policy solution.

Addressing obesity needs a whole-of-government approach, but what does that actually mean? Fundamentally, it means not giving with one hand, as with the brilliant sugar taxation that was introduced a few years ago, and taking away with the other, as with the entirely unregulated digital media landscape facing us today.