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Evidence from the United States suggests that the content of food advertising has been largely unchanged over the last 25 years. Overall budgets devoted to food advertising (including fast food retail products) in the UK have been decreasing since 1984 - from 15% of total advertising to 9% in 2002. Total food advertising expenditures have also dropped substantially - from £652m in 1989 to £430m in 2002. Restrictions on advertising do not appear to have an effect on food choice and diet-related problems. For example, Norway and Belgium have 3 or 4 times less food ads per hour on average than Germany, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands, yet suffer from higher levels of obesity. In Quebec, where advertising to children on TV has been banned for over 20 years, levels of obesity are no lower than in any other Canadian provinces. This may be explained by the fact that children today are exposed to a wider range of influences than any other generation. Children's viewing and exposure to food promotion is very fragmented and not always exposed to commercial messages - some 30% of viewing during children's programming will be BBC programmes (and up to 50% for pre-school programmes). According to the research published by Ofcom in 2004, children spend around 2 and a half hours watching TV daily, but only 22 minutes of that is spent watching children's commercial television, and 70% of their viewing is outside children's airtime. Therefore, restricting advertising during children's programming would not insulate them entirely from commercial messages. Understanding the role of marketing and developing the ability to make critical comparisons is an essential part of growing up and becoming a citizen in a free market democracy. The UK advertising industry actively promotes this awareness through, for example, the Media Smart media-literacy initiative.
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