Expert: 'Culture of craving' from 'Covid-wash' marketing adds to NZ obesity epidemic

September 24, 2021

Auckland University Professor Boyd Swinburn is unimpressed by the ploys fast food chains are using to captivate Kiwis.

A nutrition professor is calling on marketing regulations to be introduced in New Zealand as fast food chains "Covid-wash" lockdowns to promote their products to a nation already facing an obesity epidemic.

Auckland University Professor of Population Nutrition & Global Health Boyd Swinburn told Breakfast on Friday morning fast food chains and other junk food manufacturers were capitalising on Covid-19, adding to the other pandemic New Zealand is currently battling.

"Covid-washing is a little bit like whitewashing or greenwashing," Swinburn explained.

"They pretend to do something, they pretend to be on the side of the good and in this case they're pretending to show concern.

"They're there with you [in this pandemic], they're there with the frontliners - but in reality this is just a massive brand marketing exercise."

Swinburn said Covid-washing was visible during New Zealand's lockdowns last year and it has resurfaced again in 2021 with the Delta outbreak response.

"There's various things that they do but they're certainly creating a culture of craving," he said.

"'Craving for KFC, 'the pizza I miss most', 'tell us what your McDonald's cravings are', 'your Zinger Burger misses you' - those sorts of things.

"By the time lockdown finishes, everyone's out there."

Besides the manipulation, Swinburn said one of his biggest concerns is that the marketing is also targetting children.

"This is just part of a wider problem that we have around there being zero regulations and nothing to restrict junk food marketers targetting kids.

"We're in the middle of a child obesity epidemic as well as the Covid pandemic, but there's a real groundswell wanting to lift the game and get the Government better involved in lifting industries to better standards for their marketing."

fast food, junk-food and unhealthy eating concept - close up of fast food snacks and coca cola drink on wooden table

With that said, Swinburn pointed out the flawed affiliation of fast food being a comfort during the pandemic when in reality those who are obese and manage to catch the virus potentially face a more difficult recovery than others.

"Obesity is a serious risk factor and our obesity epidemic has had no real effort put into it at a Government level to regulate it and bring it back down.

"It's unfair on the next generation in that we're abandoning them to the fast food marketers."

But there's one positive from the Covid pandemic the New Zealand Government can use to address the obesity crisis here, Swinburn added.

"We've learned a lot on how to deal with these things from Covid and if we can take those strategies that we've learned - take public health seriously, listen to experts, be bold about policies and be clear about communication.

"f we could take those things that we've done so well with the Covid pandemic and apply them to other chronic problems, we'd be on the way to making this population way healthier."

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