Food Marketing to Children in Iran: Regulation that Needs Further Regulation

Increased exposure to advertising of unhealthy food products is one of the main risk factors for the increased prevalence of childhood obesity and non-communicable diseases. This scoping review aimed to investigate the characteristics and effects of food advertisements targeted at children in Iran and review the existing regulations on food marketing targeted at children in the country. In this study, we searched Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Google, and Google scholar, in addition to Iranian scientific search engines, including Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology (Iran.doc), Scientific Information Database (SID), Iranmedex, Magiran, and Civilica up to December 2020 to find any literature about food marketing to children in Iran and current related regulations and policies in the country. A total of 23 eligible studies were selected for this review. Most of the studies had focused on television as the media to assess. The main food products advertised with reference to children included: Salty snacks, including cheese puffs, chips, cheese fish snacks, puffed corn, and sweet snacks such as ice creams, cakes/biscuits/cookies and candies, beverages/drinks/soft drinks/fruit juices, dried fruits and fruit rolls, and chocolates. Strategies that most commonly used in marketing foods to children in Iran were emotional appeals, misleading messages/claims, use of music and known characters to children, as well as conveying happiness and/or security. The main reported violation of food regulations included using obese children, either as consumers or presenters of the product. In Iran the advertising of unhealthy food products for the general population is banned; however, it is weakly implemented. There are a limited number of regulations that have addressed children explicitly in this regard. The main barriers identified in partial implementation of regulations included weakness in scientific criteria, legal enforcement guarantee, poor intersectoral collaboration, inadequate infrastructures, and poor monitoring. Policies and regulations in food marketing need to clearly address children as an important audience. It is suggested future policies focused on children cover all forms of food marketing and consider all types of persuasive food marketing strategies targeted at children.

Development of the Choices 5-Level Criteria to Support Multiple Food System Actions

In 2008, the Choices International Foundation developed its logo criteria, identifying best-in-class food products. More advanced, global and graded nutrient profiling systems (NPSs) are needed to substantiate different national nutrition policies. The objective of this work was to extend Choices NPS to identify five levels of the healthiness of food products, so that the Choices NPS can also be used to support other nutrition policies, next to front-of-pack labelling. Based on the same principles as the previous logo criteria, four sets of threshold criteria were determined using a combination of compliance levels, calculated from a large international food group-specific database, the Choices logo criteria, and WHO-NPSs developed to restrict marketing to children. Validation consisted of a comparison with indicator foods from food-based dietary guidelines from various countries. Some thresholds were adjusted after the validation, e.g., because intermediate thresholds were too lenient. This resulted in a new international NPS that can be applied to different contexts and to support a variety of health policies, to prevent both undernutrition and obesity. It can efficiently evaluate mixed food products and represents a flexible tool, applicable in various settings and populations.

Policy Inertia on Regulating Food Marketing to Children: A Case Study of Malaysia

Unhealthy food marketing shapes children’s preference towards obesogenic foods. In Malaysia, policies regulating this food marketing were rated as poor compared to global standards, justifying the need to explore barriers and facilitators during policy development and implementation processes. The case study incorporated qualitative methods, including historical mapping, semi-structured interviews with key informants and a search of cited documents. Nine participants were interviewed, representing the Federal government (n = 5), food industry (n = 2) and civil society (n = 2). Even though the mandatory approach to government-led regulation of food marketing to children was the benchmark, more barriers than facilitators in the policy process led to industry self-regulations in Malaysia. Cited barriers were the lack of political will, industry resistance, complexity of legislation, technical challenges, and lack of resources, particularly professional skills. The adoption of industry self-regulation created further barriers to subsequent policy advancement. These included implementer indifference (industry), lack of monitoring, poor stakeholder relations, and policy characteristics linked to weak criteria and voluntary uptake. These underlying barriers, together with a lack of sustained public health advocacy, exacerbated policy inertia. Key recommendations include strengthening pro-public health stakeholder partnerships, applying sustained efforts in policy advocacy to overcome policy inertia, and conducting monitoring for policy compliance and accountability. These form the key lessons for advocating policy reforms.

Exposure of Children to Unhealthy Food and Beverage Advertisements in South Africa

Television (TV) is a powerful medium for marketing food and beverages. Food and beverage marketers tend to use this medium to target children with the hope that children will in turn influence their families’ food choices. No study has assessed the compliance of TV marketers with the South African Marketing to Children pledge since the enactment of the 2014 food advertising recommendations by the South African Department of Health and the Advertising Standards Authority. This study investigated the extent and nature of advertising of unhealthy versus healthy food and beverages to children in South African TV broadcasting channels. The date, time, type, frequency and target audience of food advertisements (ads) on four free-to-air South African TV channels were recorded and captured using a structured assessment guide. The presence of persuasive marketing techniques was also assessed. Unhealthy food and beverage advertising was recorded at a significantly higher rate compared with healthy food and beverages during the time frame when children were likely to be watching TV. Brand benefit claims, health claims and power strategies (e.g., advertising using cartoon characters and celebrated individuals) were used as persuasive strategies. These persuasive strategies were used more in unhealthy versus healthy food ads. The findings are in breach of the South African Marketing to Children pledge and suggest a failure of the industry self-regulation system. We recommend the introduction of monitored and enforced statutory regulations to ensure healthy TV food advertising space.

Social online marketing engagement (SoMe) study of food and drink brands: Real time measurement of Australian children (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Food is one of the most frequently promoted commodities and promoted foods are overwhelmingly unhealthy. Marketing normalises unhealthy foods, creates positive brand images and encourages overconsumption. Limited research is available to describe the extent of food marketing to children on online media and measuring actual exposure is challenging. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to monitor the extent of children’s exposure to online media food marketing, as an essential step in increasing the accountability of industry and governments to protect children. METHODS Children aged 13-17 were recruited in October 2018-March 2019. Children recorded their mobile device screen for two weekdays and one weekend day anytime they visited relevant online platforms. After each day, participants uploaded video files to a secure server. Promoted products were defined using the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe Region nutrient profile model. RESULTS The sample of 95 children uploaded 267.8 hours of video data. Children saw a median of 17.4 food promotions each hour online. Considering usual time online on mobile devices, children would be exposed to a median of 168.4 food promotions online on mobile devices per week, 99.5 of which would not be permitted to be marketed based on nutrient profiling criteria. Most promotions (58.8%) were peer endorsed and derived from third parties sources. CONCLUSIONS Exposure to brand content that is seemingly endorsed by peers or online communities likely heightens the effects of marketing on children. Regulations to protect children from this marketing must extend beyond paid advertising to paid content in posts generated through online communities and influencers. CLINICALTRIAL N/A