You know when something really niggles you…..you just can’t stop thinking about it. You simply have a bee in your bonnet.
Well this is how I feel right now.
My bee is all that checkout junk – the sweets and the chocolate that may taste nice but should not be a part of our daily diet. So what’s my problem? Basically it’s the deliberate placing of a vast array of tempting foods that are high in Calories, sugar, fat and salt (and of no nutritional value I hasten to add!) at a grab-able level, right next to the tills. Whilst we remain trapped in queues waiting to pay, the store has us exactly where they want us. We are in a captive junk food market. They may not have a conscience but surely stores must have a socially responsible marketing policy? Put simply, they should not be encouraging unhealthy impulse buys.
A month ago today (19.01.15) I had a rant about this on my Grub Hub (which you can read here). To a certain extent I felt better for getting it off my chest but when I was asked to write a guest blog for fuse I started to dream that maybe we could really take this rant to higher places.
So I wrote for fuse (which you can read here) and on the 3rd Feb it was published. We got over 500 hits which is amazing.
Now I am really serious about getting ALL stores to commit to junk free checkouts. This week I set up a Thunderclap campaign – a social media tool that can be used to spread a particular message. The fuse team are doing amazing work helping raise awareness and they are now hosting my campaign.
Please go to their site and read our latest blog post (click here) where you can also sign up to my campaign. Fuse explains how Thunderclap works and what you need to do to add your support.
You can also access my campaign page here
At the moment we have the British Dental Association, British Dietetic Association, Children’s Food Trust, Faculty of Public Health and Action on Sugar on board (amongst many others!) so you will be in very good company!
If you agree that stores should ban displays of sweets and chocolate at the till area, then please do click support – every single one helps!
Thank you so much
Mel
The Grub Hub 