While marketing like financial donations, sponsorships, scholarships and donations of branded items by ultra-processed product/food companies may seem helpful on the surface, they pose three main problems:

They promote unhealthy choices to impressionable children
They build relationships and a financial dependency between these companies and our schools which make it harder for schools to support healthy food policies (that do not favour those companies)

And this, in turn, makes it harder to create a healthy food environment in our schools.

Children spend many hours at school and studies prove that what they eat and drink, and are influenced to eat and drink during their early years, fosters lifelong habits. So, when our children are continuously presented with unhealthy food choices and bombarded with messaging that makes these unhealthy choices seem normal, acceptable and appealing, it’s setting them up for a life of poor dietary choices and poor health.

As a society, we must do better for the children.

It’s time to ban the marketing of ultra-processed products in and around our schools. Because nothing at school should ever encourage unhealthy choices!