Abstract:Background
Children’s exposure to unhealthy food and beverage marketing has a direct impact on their dietary preference for, and consumption of, unhealthy food and drinks. Most children spend time online, yet marketing restrictions for this medium have had slow uptake globally. A voluntary Children’s and Young People’s Advertising (CYPA) Code was implemented in Aotearoa, New Zealand (NZ) in 2017. This study explores the Code’s limitations in protecting children from harmful food and beverage ma… Show more
“…Adolescents in Savona et al's work also identified the influence of large food manufacturers and advertisers as an strong driver of the consumption of unhealthy food [15]. Of particular concern is the concentration of advertising around commercial sites of sale [43], the concentration of fast-food outlets in low advantage communities [44], particularly schools [45,46], and the two-fold exposure of Māori children to unhealthy food and drink marketing compared to non-Māori children [47].…”
Children’s nutrition is highly influenced by community-level deprivation and socioeconomic inequalities and the health outcomes associated, such as childhood obesity, continue to widen. Systems Thinking using community-based system dynamics (CBSD) approaches can build community capacity, develop new knowledge and increase commitments to health improvement at the community level. We applied the formal structure and resources of a Group Model Building (GMB) approach, embedded within an Indigenous worldview to engage a high deprivation, high Indigenous population regional community in New Zealand to improve children’s nutrition. Three GMB workshops were held and the youth and adult participants created two systems map of the drivers and feedback loops of poor nutrition in the community. Māori Indigenous knowledge (mātauranga) and approaches (tikanga) were prioritized to ensure cultural safety of participants and to encourage identification of interventions that take into account social and cultural environmental factors. While the adult-constructed map focused more on the influence of societal factors such as cost of housing, financial literacy in communities, and social security, the youth-constructed map placed more emphasis on individual-environment factors such as the influence of marketing by the fast-food industry and mental wellbeing. Ten prioritized community-proposed interventions such as increasing cultural connections in schools, are presented with the feasibility and likely impact for change of each intervention rated by community leaders. The combination of community-based system dynamics methods of group model building and a mātauranga Māori worldview is a novel Indigenous systems approach that engages participants and highlights cultural and family issues in the systems maps, acknowledging the ongoing impact of historical colonization in our communities.
“…Adolescents in Savona et al's work also identified the influence of large food manufacturers and advertisers as an strong driver of the consumption of unhealthy food [15]. Of particular concern is the concentration of advertising around commercial sites of sale [43], the concentration of fast-food outlets in low advantage communities [44], particularly schools [45,46], and the two-fold exposure of Māori children to unhealthy food and drink marketing compared to non-Māori children [47].…”
Children’s nutrition is highly influenced by community-level deprivation and socioeconomic inequalities and the health outcomes associated, such as childhood obesity, continue to widen. Systems Thinking using community-based system dynamics (CBSD) approaches can build community capacity, develop new knowledge and increase commitments to health improvement at the community level. We applied the formal structure and resources of a Group Model Building (GMB) approach, embedded within an Indigenous worldview to engage a high deprivation, high Indigenous population regional community in New Zealand to improve children’s nutrition. Three GMB workshops were held and the youth and adult participants created two systems map of the drivers and feedback loops of poor nutrition in the community. Māori Indigenous knowledge (mātauranga) and approaches (tikanga) were prioritized to ensure cultural safety of participants and to encourage identification of interventions that take into account social and cultural environmental factors. While the adult-constructed map focused more on the influence of societal factors such as cost of housing, financial literacy in communities, and social security, the youth-constructed map placed more emphasis on individual-environment factors such as the influence of marketing by the fast-food industry and mental wellbeing. Ten prioritized community-proposed interventions such as increasing cultural connections in schools, are presented with the feasibility and likely impact for change of each intervention rated by community leaders. The combination of community-based system dynamics methods of group model building and a mātauranga Māori worldview is a novel Indigenous systems approach that engages participants and highlights cultural and family issues in the systems maps, acknowledging the ongoing impact of historical colonization in our communities.
“…There is robust evidence that traditional forms of marketing increase consumption of harmful products (Babor, 2010;Babor et al, 2022;Garde et al, 2018;Sing et al, 2022). But because of the nature of digital and social media marketing, this effect is exacerbated (Buchanan et al, 2018;Montgomery and Chester, 2009;Tatlow-Golden and Garde, 2020;VicHealth, 2020;World Health Organization, 2022, 2023; World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2016Europe, , 2021.…”
Section: Digital Marketing Of Harmful Commodities: Insidious Opaque A...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…According to a 2022 study, 85% of posts and videos on company Facebook pages and YouTube channels for the most popular packaged food, fast food and non-alcoholic beverage brands/companies in New Zealand featured unhealthy food or drinks (Garton, Gerritsen et al, 2022). The AdHealth study (Kidd et al, 2021) assessed the exposure of New Zealand Facebook users aged 16-18 to 'paid' food advertisements.…”
Although the creators of the world wide web never intended it to be regulated by state intervention, the rapid evolution of the online environment has necessitated regulation of certain aspects of the digital ecosystem. Harmful commodity marketing (e.g., alcohol, vaping and unhealthy food and beverage product marketing) on social media and in digital spaces has been linked to adverse health outcomes and there have been calls for its regulation. In this commentary we explain why this is important and consider how such regulation could be achieved.
“…Existing nutrition policy has failed Māori ( Theodore et al , 2015 ). Furthermore, a lack of government regulation in relation to food marketing has failed to adequately protect Māori children, and therefore could be considered a breach of the Te Tiriti ( Theodore et al , 2015 ; Garton et al , 2022 ). Changes to the food environment, through the expansion of the digital environment will be considered in line with responsibilities under Te Tiriti from a health equity perspective,…”
Services offering on-demand delivery of unhealthy commodities, such as fast food, alcohol and smoking/vaping products have proliferated in recent years. It is well known that the built environment can be health promoting or harmful to health, but there has been less consideration of the digital environment. Increased availability and accessibility of these commodities may be associated with increased consumption, with harmful public health implications. Policy regulating the supply of these commodities was developed before the introduction of on-demand services and has not kept pace with the digital environment. This paper reports on semi-structured interviews with health policy experts on the health harms of the uptake in on-demand delivery of food, alcohol and smoking/vaping products, along with their views on policies that might mitigate these harms. We interviewed 14 policy experts from central and local government agencies and ministries, health authorities, non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and university research positions in Aotearoa New Zealand using a purposive sampling strategy. Participants concerns over the health harms from on-demand services encompassed three broad themes—the expansion of access to and availability of unhealthy commodities, the inadequacy of existing restrictions and regulations in the digital environment and the expansion of personalized marketing and promotional platforms for unhealthy commodities. Health policy experts’ proposals to mitigate harms included: limiting access and availability, updating regulations and boosting enforcement and limiting promotion and marketing. Collectively, these findings and proposals can inform future research and public health policy decisions to address harms posed by on-demand delivery of unhealthy commodities.
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