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correspondence

Indian Pediatr 2012;49: 503

Ban on Advertisement of Food Product


Jagdish Prasad Goyal

Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, PDU Medical College, Rajkot, Gujarat.
Email: [email protected]
 


I read with interest the recent articles by Jaykaran and JP Dadich [1, 2]. They have rightly pointed out the misleading health claims by food manufacturer. Most of practicing pediatricians are busy in their office practice and they usually transfer the information to the patients which are provided my medical representative of pharmaceutical companies. Sometimes parents also demand some health drink for their child to grow fast. We should be very judicious to prescribe health drink to patients as sometime it may lead to problem of overweight and obesity in children. Indian Pediatrics should publish such types of articles to aware its readers. Journal must not publish advertisement of health drinks without critically analyzing studies related to this product. The journal may adopt some policy like the Journal of Emergency Medicine Australasia which has stopped all drugs advertising forthwith. The authors said "drug ads were counter to a medical journal’s mission to provide objective data that enabled doctors to make judgments based on the best available evidence and such advertising could change the prescribing practices of doctors" [3]. It is a high time for Indian Pediatrics to show leadership and make a stand for at least not advertising health drink/ food products.

References

1. Jay Karan. Advertisement of "Complan". Indian Pediatr. 2011;48:412.

2. Dadhich JP. Misleading health claims for food products need to be banned. Indian Pediatr. 2011; 48:413-5.

3. Jelinek GA, Brown AF. A stand against drug company advertising. Emerg Med Australas 2011; 23: 4-6.

 

Reply


We thank Dr Goyal for his encouraging comments on the recently published articles related to misleading health claims by nutritional supplement manufacturers [1]. Regarding advertisements of food products, Indian Pediatrics endorses IAP Policy of not accepting advertisements from companies covered under IMS Act. As Indian Pediatrics is distributed free to its approximately 20,000 readers, the financial demands of the journal does not allow us to put a blanket ban on any food product/health drink. Further, the journal explicitly states on the contents page, and again reiterates that it does not guarantee the claims made by any of the advertisers [ibis].

The journal readership consists of medical professionals who are expected to keep themselves updated with the latest information in the field. Being busy in practice and passing on information received from sales executives to the parents does not measure up to the high professional standards expected from all of us.

Editorial Team
Indian Pediatrics.


 

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