The State is failing to protect Irish children’s health by leaving them open to “manipulation” by online advertising from junk food and fizzy drink marketing companies, the Irish Heart Foundation has warned. The foundation is calling for a blanket ban on junk food marketing to children under 16 years, and has warned that controversial targets used by Cambridge Analytics to target voters in the US presidential election were also being used by marketing groups on unsuspecting children. Speaking before the Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs, the group’s head of advocacy Chris Macey warned that companies marketing junk food were relentlessly targeting children through online platforms. “Junk brands have achieved a wholly inappropriate proximity to children – pestering them relentlessly in school, at home, even in their bedrooms through their smart phones. “Junk food marketing involves the world’s best marketing brains relentlessly targeting children every single day.

Source: The Irish Times April 18, 2018 16:30 UTC