Cartoon characters on kids’ packs slammed by Which?

The consumer watchdog said in its ‘Food Fables – the second sitting’ report published today (16 July) that some companies, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Weetabix, had started to take a more responsible approach to marketing food products to children, but many are still reliant on competitions and cartoon characters on packaging for their promotions.

Which? criticised on-pack promotions from Haribo where children can join an exclusive Candy Club to receive free sweets, Kellogg’s and Nestlé’s use of cartoon characters in the marketing of less healthy cereals and Kraft’s use of the Dairylea cow on its packaging, and said it would be more responsible to use these characters to promote healthier foods.

Which? chief policy adviser Sue Davies said: “We’re not against treats and we’re not against marketing, but we are against irresponsible company practices and hollow company commitments. You just have to walk around any supermarket to see the wealth of cartoon characters persuading children to pick the less healthy option.”

The study also found nutritional labelling to be “inconsistent and inadequate”.

Which? has consistently called for the traffic light system of labelling, which is colour-coded and based on values per 100g, and said the Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) scheme, favoured by Tesco, had “major inconsistencies”.

Some food companies listed values as a percentage of a five to ten-year-old child’s GDA on sweets, while others gave the percentage of an adult’s GDA.

The study also found some of the serving sizes “misleading”, with some sweets labelled with percentage GDA for a single sweet rather than the whole bag, which was unlikely to reflect the amount usually eaten.

Packaging Federation chief executive Dick Searle said the use of cartoon characters on packaging was “all part of the marketing mix” and “generally speaking it should be the role of parents to monitor what their children eat, not food companies”.

“Nutritional labelling is a bit of a minefield, but the more information it contains, the more useful it is. It’s down to the Food Standards Agency to sort this out, not food companies or the packaging industry,” he said.

What do you think about the findings of the Which? report – add your comments below.

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