Prevalence of Child-Directed Marketing on Breakfast Cereal Packages before and after Chile’s Food Marketing Law: A Pre-Post Quantitative Content Analysis

Citation

Mediano Stoltze, Fernanda; Reyes, Marcela; Taillie, Lindsey Smith; Correa, Teresa; Corvalan, Camila; & Carpentier, Francesca R. Dillman (2019). Prevalence of Child-Directed Marketing on Breakfast Cereal Packages before and after Chile’s Food Marketing Law: A Pre-Post Quantitative Content Analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(22), E4501.

Abstract

Food marketing has been identified as a contributing factor in childhood obesity, prompting global health organizations to recommend restrictions on unhealthy food marketing to children. Chile has responded to this recommendation with a restriction of child-directed marketing for products that exceed certain regulation-defined thresholds in sugars, saturated fats, sodium or calories. Child-directed strategies are allowed for products that do not exceed these thresholds. To evaluate changes in marketing due to this restriction, we examined differences in the use of child directed strategies on breakfast cereal packages that exceeded the defined thresholds vs. those that did not exceed the thresholds before (n=168) and after (n=153) the restriction was implemented. Photographs of cereal packages were taken from top supermarket chains in Santiago. Photographed cereals were classified as “high-in” if they exceeded any nutrient threshold described in the regulation. We found that the percentage of all cereal packages using child-directed strategies before implementation (36%) was significantly lower after implementation (21%), p<.05. This overall decrease is due to the decrease we found in the percentage of “high-in” cereals using child-directed strategies after implementation (43% before implementation, 15% after implementation), p<.05. In contrast, a greater percentage of packages that did not qualify as “high-in” used child-directed strategies after implementation (30%), compared to before implementation (8%), p<.05. Results suggest that the Chilean food marketing regulation can be effective at reducing the use of child directed marketing for unhealthy food products.

URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16224501

Reference Type

Journal Article

Year Published

2019

Journal Title

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Author(s)

Mediano Stoltze, Fernanda
Reyes, Marcela
Taillie, Lindsey Smith
Correa, Teresa
Corvalan, Camila
Carpentier, Francesca R. Dillman

ORCiD

Taillie - 0000-0002-4555-2525
Mediano Stoltze - 0000-0003-1474-349X