Fried Chicken at the Cricket Stadium
Pakistan recently won a T-20 cricket series against South Africa. A moment of celebration for the nation and Pakistani cricket fans all over.
I view sports, like many, as an activity that celebrates team spirit, nationalism, and health.
Many companies leverage sports activities to market their products, including the food industry. Food and sports go hand in hand. You are what you eat, after all. There are nutritionists and dietitians, along with fitness trainers, who are an integral part of the sports team. They are responsible for ensuring the fitness of the sportspersons. Inevitably, the recommendation for a sportsperson is to rely as much as possible on a healthy and balanced diet.
The irony does not skip me when I see, as a viewer, the types of food brands that take centre stage in the sports arena.
Going back to the recent celebratory example of the Pakistan-South Africa cricket match, the pitch camera frame had a distracting image of a bright red fried chicken bucket right behind the stumps. As many would agree, fried chicken is not considered the healthiest food option out there. The Pakistan cricket team, on their uniform, had the logo of a local frozen food brand (mostly chicken), which again is another unhealthy fast-food option.
During the recent Pakistan Super League (PSL) season, I observed the types of brands present in the stadiums. These included sugar-loaded fizzy drinks to snacks high in calories, sugar, salt, and fat and low in nutrition. There was an outrageous moment when, during a match, the camera zoomed into four children munching on the doughnuts manufactured by an event sponsor. It is a perfect example of an oxymoron situation where unhealthy food sponsors a healthy activity.
Unhealthy food products partnering with sportsperson is not new. In fact, as a child, I remember watching television advertisements of a well-known high-calorie, high-sugar carbonated drink featuring famous Pakistani cricketers. Often these advertisements also included children. One such ad of the same fizzy beverage featured the song ‘hum hain Pakistani, hum to jeetay gey’ [We are Pakistani, we will definitely win]. This ad showed children and gave the message that drinking the beverage is part of the winning formula.
I wonder if we can win the battle against non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and obesity if we have high-profile influencers endorsing food products detrimental to our health?
Food companies get their products featured through sports and sportspersons in Pakistan by paying hefty sums to the individuals and the organisers. It is, in my view, a question of ethics on whether we truly celebrate sports as a way of promoting a healthy lifestyle or a way to make money at the expense of advertising unhealthy food. Sports event organisers must put more thought into who they are bringing into the limelight to fund their events. For popular sports, like cricket, it is important to utilise the platform to also promote healthy eating and lifestyle habits since the viewership represents different age groups and gender.
The World Health Organization (WHO) statistics in 2016 stated that 20.8% of the Pakistani population is overweight and 4.8% is obese. The main culprit behind these figures is diet and food choices. Choices are influenced by marketing campaigns, ubiquitous and not regularised on digital and out-of-home (OOH) avenues. It is important to realise that if we want to curb the increasing burden of non-communicable disease, which can translate into high out-of-pocket medical costs for individuals, we need to rethink our food marketing strategies and ethics. The types of food brand endorsements made by sports events and sportspeople can have a major impact on people’s food choices.
