Food Advertising, Influence of

The influence of food advertising on children is an immensely complex issue of interest to policymakers, health professionals, and politicians. Given the growing evidence that obesity is a pandemic of growing proportions documented by the World Health Organization, this is not surprising. However, there is often a tendency to simplify, and the rhetoric about negative effects of food advertising to children sometimes goes beyond the facts. Evidence that food advertising to children has an influence on their preferences and choices of different brands is available, but it should be approached with caution given the methodological limitations of the research. Because food preference and choice is but one parameter in the multifactorial problem of obesity in children, there is limited evidence that promotional activity makes a significant contribution to the problem of obesity.

Surveys on the incidence of television food advertising to children have been done regularly since the 1978 analysis by Barcus and McLaughlin. In 1999, Gamble and Cotugna published a review of research over the past quarter-century. The picture that emerges is dominated by foods such as highly sugared breakfast cereals, convenience foods, and food services such as McDonald's and Burger King, with negligible advertising of fresh fruit and vegetables. It is generally agreed that, taken together, these foods would not constitute a healthy diet. However, two issues need to be addressed. Because children are fledgling consumers with allowances that are not spent on supermarket items such as breakfast cereals, children don't directly purchase most of the foods advertised. The market for foods advertised to children is a family market in which children do exert an influence on purchase and consumption patterns. Although household purchase patterns are influenced by children's preferences and their negotiating skills within the family (so-called pester power), this influence is mediated by family styles of communication, negotiation, and socialization. The second issue is that there is no simple mapping between patterns of dietary preference and choice in children and foods advertised in the market for children and young people. Dietary habits are already well established by culture, peers, and family during the period of primary socialization. The range of foods that are advertised is driven largely by the economics of advertising, which is concerned with buying media time for a brand or portfolio of brands. In a lucrative market (such as foods for kids), many brands in, for example, the snacks or sugared drinks sectors are advertised just because there are many companies competing for market share. Ads for fruit and vegetables are few because there is little branding in this sector.

How is the influence of food advertising on children ascertained? Advertising is not limited to broadcast advertising on TV, magazines, or billboards, as there are point-of-sale displays, vending machines in schools, and other techniques to consider. However, most of the research has been done on television advertising to children. In the 1970s and 1980s, the constant barrage of food advertising on Saturday mornings and after school was a great cause for concern—the phrase kid-vid ghetto was used to aptly describe the situation at that time. It is extremely difficult, however, to design research that simulates the effect on dietary habits of different levels of cumulative exposure to food advertising, not least because current models of media effects incorporate a child who actively processes information (see Valkenburg, 2004), and it would be difficult to control the various strategies used by different groups of children to view and understand advertising in context.

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