There is some debate about whether so called pester power is a real phenomenon – proponents of a ban on food advertising to children argue that the food industry relies on pester power to translate advertising spend in to product sales.
But the industry itself argues that parents retain control of what goes in the shopping basket and that the potency of pester power is overstated.
Yet, according to mother of four, Niamh Sexton, pester power is very real indeed and it manifests itself every time she takes her children, Aoife (9), James (7), Roisin (5) and Conor (3), to the supermarket. Sexton considers herself to be quite strict and says she is well able to say ‘no’ to her children – but she’s adamant that the link between advertising and the pestering is a direct one.
“I have to listen to a chorus of ‘can we?’ along the way,” she says. “They see a product on television and then they see it translated into real life in the supermarket and they just want it. I feel that I am constantly saying ‘no’ to them. It just makes life harder.”
The biggest problem she encounters is with breakfast cereals. “They are pointing at these cereals like Coco Pops ‘Moon and Stars’ that they recognise from TV. These are things I would not buy in a million years and I am constantly trying to explain to them that they are rubbish, but sometimes they end up physically taking them off the shelves and putting them in the trolley and I have to take them out again.”
Her children eat porridge on school days. “Obviously I think it’s far healthier for them but it’s also a lot cheaper. Those other cereals are so expensive. It’s a daily battle to get them to eat porridge and again I think it’s because they are seeing all these ads for colourful, sugary cereals so there are tears some days.”
The fact that food companies are targeting children via the internet is also borne out in their house.
“I went in to check on James one day and he was on a food company website which he had obviously seen on a TV ad. He was playing a game that was on the site which is harmless enough but there were product advertisements on both sides of the screen. The companies are using these free games to draw kids in and then they bombard them with advertising.”
Julie Kilcawley from Enniscrone in Sligo says that her two girls, Ellen (8) and Rose (7), find it hard to differentiate between the programmes they watch and ads. “They will come to me and say that such-and-such a drink that they saw on the TV will give them extra energy and I have to explain to them that it’s all make-believe.”