Advertising Unhealthy Food to Children: on the Importance of Regulations, Parenting Styles, and Media Literacy

Abstract

Purpose of Review Childhood obesity is a global health concern. And a number of studies have indicated that food promotions affect children’s food attitudes, preferences, and food choices for foods high in fat and sugar, which potentially impacts children’s body weight development. This review showcases how children are affected by food promotions, why companies even target children with their promotional efforts, and what makes children so susceptible to promotion of unhealthy food. In addition, this review discusses how regulations, parental styles, and individual media literacy skills can help to contain the potential detrimental effects of food promotions on children’s health. Recent Findings The recent findings indicate that children are affected by food promotions in their preference for unhealthy food and beverages in selection tasks shortly conducted after exposure. Furthermore, results indicate significant effects of food marketing, including enhanced attitudes, preferences, and increased consumption of marketed (predominantly unhealthy) foods connected with a wide range of marketing strategies. Children are particularly vulnerable to promotional efforts and react to it strongly due to their still developing cognitive and social skills as well as their lack in inhibitory control. Summary This review proposes an applied focus that discusses pathways for regulators, parents, and educators. In the light of the discussed results, a large number of studies on food promotion indicate that there is need to react. In all these measures, however, it is of relevance to consider children’s developmental stages to effectively counteract and respond to the potential detrimental effects of food promotions on children’s long-term weight development.

Strategies used by the soft drink industry to grow and sustain sales: a case-study of The Coca-Cola Company in East Asia

“…While many of TCCC’s identified marketing campaigns are not in violation of these pledges, which commonly only apply to children under the age of 12 years, they highlight how explicit TCCC is at targeting the gatekeepers of young children’s diets (mothers), and older children. These findings are concerning because of the demonstrated influence of unhealthy food and beverage marketing over children’s food and beverage preferences for and consumption of unhealthy products, with unhealthy food and beverage marketing shown to increase children’s requests for advertised products and undermine caregivers’ intentions to provide healthier foods and beverages 47 155–157. Our findings support evidence showing industry-led codes are ineffective at reducing children’s exposure to unhealthy food and beverage marketing 158–161.…”

Promotion of Food and Beverages by German-Speaking Influencers Popular with Adolescents on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram

“…Media presentation of food and beverages is an integral part of our lives, and the types of foods we are exposed to shape our preferences and eating behaviours. In fact, there is ample evidence that food advertising and representations are associated with specific brands or food choices (see [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ] for recent reviews and meta analyses). This is even more true when viewers are children, and the food depicted is high in fat, salt, and sugar (HFSS), even more so when viewers are already prone to unhealthy eating habits [ 8 ].…”

Commercial Speech and Unhealthy Food Products: Conceptual Foundations

“…This, in turn, impacts their body weight development and, thus, their health. 17 As a response to the global concern for childhood obesity, countries like Chile, South Korea, the U.K., and Argentina have adopted regulations to reduce children's exposure to the marketing of unhealthy food products -including prohibitions of marketing of unhealthy products in schools, or using fictional characters, like cartoons, to encourage consumption. 18 This shows that, under the liberal framework, the autonomy-defense of commercial speech does not apply to children.…”