Open wide and eat up

What's the story with food-testing for children: An almighty row broke out earlier this month when it was highlighted that a business run from the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) was using schoolchildren to test commercial products, some of which were, critics said, of dubious nutritional value.

For five years DIT's Food Product Development Centre (FPDC) has been using schoolchildren to taste and evaluate products from food companies including Green Isle, Glanbia and Robert Roberts. Is this aimportant tool in the development of healthier food options for children or dangerous exploitation of the young and vulnerable by greedy corporations? It depends on who you believe.

Opposition politicians wasted no time in using the story to give the Government a good kicking. Speaking in the Dáil, Fine Gael TD Denis Naughten and the Green Party's Paul Gogarty competed to be more outraged. "Measures need to be put in place urgently to stop our children being exploited," said Gogarty. "Schools should be places of learning not propaganda."

It wasn't just politicians who expressed concern. "Schools should be safe and secure for young people," Youth Work Ireland spokesman Michael McLoughlin said. "These events send out all the wrong messages in relation to healthy eating and lifestyles; schools should know better."

The Campaign for Commercial-Free Education also condemned the programme as "disgraceful and dishonest exploitation" of children. The chairman of the Campaign, Joseph Fogarty, said using schoolchildren as product-samplers "is to brazenly misuse children's time in school".

However, the story was "blown out of all proportion" and the criticism of the research unjustified, according to DIT spokeswoman Jean Cahill. She says that 95 per cent of the centre's work involves adults and on the few occasions research has been carried out using children it has tended to focus on making popular products healthier by reducing sugar, salt and fat content.

She says that on the solitary occasion over the past five years that the company carried out research on burgers - the product which attracted much of the criticism - the centre was trying to establish, on behalf of a client, how children felt about a new brand made with 100 per cent beef when compared with an additive-filled product. She says that the centre is engaged in consumer research and not market research and the children are only ever asked to blind-test products.

"They are given tiny samples and asked which they prefer; it is not a marketing tool," she says. "Some of the stories implied that we were going into schools with bags of crisps and shoving them down children's throats, which is absolutely not the case."

She stresses that the rights and welfare of children had been safeguarded, and internationally recognised guidelines had been followed at all times. She insists that the testing did not involve commercialism in the school and points out that there has been no financial gain for either the schools involved or DIT. She says it is an "applied research project" and runs on a strictly not-for-profit basis.

While DIT insists it is not in the business of promoting one brand over another, the universally hostile reaction to the story shows what an affront the commercial exploitation of the young and vulnerable by big business is. While the research team at DIT does not sell directly to children, there are plenty of others who do.

In 2004, the US Congress asked the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate the marketing of food at children. It recently published its findings and, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, the study "provides a chilling account of how this practice affects children's health". The study found food marketing deliberately targets children too young to distinguish advertising from truth and induces them to eat high-calorie, low-nutrient junk foods.

Some major corporations have recognised that the tide is turning, as the recent announcement from Disney that it was ending its 10-year Happy Meal alliance with McDonald's suggests.

Back at home, a study carried out by the DIT research centre on behalf of Masterfoods Ireland into the eating and lifestyle patterns of Irish tweens was to be published this morning in a Dublin national school. Masterfoods announced late last week that it was postponing publication. A spokeswoman told PriceWatch that the delay was for "operational reasons" and denied it was connected with the row over food testing.

The study is now expected to be released in September and will show that 42 per cent of the parents of Irish children aged between eight and 12 prepare three or more different dinners for their family on weekdays and only 37 per cent of tweens eat breakfast with their family on school days. It also found that pester power is over-estimated, with 70 per cent of 10-year-olds telling DIT's researchers that they never ask their parents to buy food they see advertised on TV.

But they would say that, wouldn't they.