Junk food companies should not be allowed to advertise sponsorship with sports teams, according to the HSE.
Companies like Supermac’s sponsor teams such as Galway in exchange for advertising the logo on uniforms.
HSE clinical lead for Obesity Professor Donal O’Shea said the HSE has been asking the Irish State for 15 years to consider banning advertised sponsorship from sweet companies.
“Sponsorship of sports teams even at the underage level is happening with so-called junk food,” he told Lunchtime Live.
“You have to call it out when the pattern of disease that we’re seeing in hospitals is being driven by the pattern of food consumption.”
He said confectionary companies will use many tactics to subtly advertise to children, despite some bans on advertising junk food to children.
Tactics include the placing of products at children’s eye level and using popular baby names at the time in ads, according to Prof O’Shea.
“We have to call it out for the health burden [that it is],” he said.
“It’s packaging appeal to the three-year-old brain… it shouldn’t be tolerated.”
Junk food sponsorship
CEO and Co-founder of Sport Endorse Trevor Twamley said there is a “problem with obesity” in Ireland – but banning sponsorships isn’t the way to deal with that.
“I think it starts at home – as a father of three girls when they go to creche it’s the stuff there and they’re going to eat it,” he said.
He also noted companies like Supermac’s are a huge help to the teams they sponsor.
“It creates more employment, it creates more people playing the sport,” he said.
“When you start banning you take money away from the sports… it trickles down.
“[Sponsorships] do feed the grassroots – banning isn’t the way to go.”
He also pointed out that a fifth of people still smoke cigarettes despite the ban on advertising them.
Prof O’Shea said someone like Supermac’s is welcome to sponsor Galway GAA – but they don’t need the logo on the jersey.
“That logo is advertising to incredibly impressionable young people.”
Listen back here: