Dr. Norah Campbell:

I am a bit scared of Senator Cassells because I think he would make an amazing junk food marketer. He is absolutely right. I teach food marketing in Trinity College Dublin and the very first thing I ask students is to write down what their definition of food is. When 99% of them say that food is fuel or food is nutrition, I say to them they are not thinking like a marketer. For a marketer, food is not nutrition, food is not fuel. Food is a psychosocial glue that holds people together. It is a set of symbols that allows people to be with each other.

I recognise that the brands that are able to communicate online without foregrounding the product creates a massive loophole. We can have a model similar to that proposed by the UK Government where there is a 9 p.m. watershed so none of the brands associated with HSSF foods is allowed to use its own initiated social media until then which would reduce the incredible exposure of children to it. Alternatively, all marketing communications must show the product. If that product is past a certain nutritional content, then it should not have a social media presence. I teach executives in this. Business works like a hydraulic model: cut one thing off and the energy and innovation will flow to another. It is the way capitalism works. The thing we should cut off is the exposure of unhealthy food online so that companies will reformulate, and do so far faster than they have done to date. Therefore, I propose a watershed or regulation that compels the companies to foreground the product, and that the product would have to be reformulated. Those are the only two practical ways I see.