Opinion: Harmful marketing threatens children’s right to healthy food

Children and young people today live in a media landscape with a breadth and reach unlike any existing before.

In the United States, 69% of children aged 12 own a smartphone, and 42% of aged 5 to 7 in the United Kingdom have their own tablet device, with 82% of children in that age range going online.

Internet use is becoming the norm for children worldwide. In South Africa and Argentina 88% of children aged 9 to 17 access the internet through a smartphone at least once a week; in Brazil, 93% do so.

This comes with huge benefits in learning and education, in seeing parts of the world and cultures they might not otherwise see, and in having many more ways to be entertained and have fun.

But it also means children are more vulnerable to the same breadth of multimedia exposure negatively affecting their health through the marketing of harmful food and drink products in more contexts and from a younger age than ever before.

Rising unhealthy eating habits in children

Rates of child obesity and overweight have exploded over the past four decades. In 2016, 18% of children and adolescents were overweight or obese, compared to only 4% in 1975.

This is not an issue that affects only the West — the number of overweight children under 5 in Africa has increased by nearly 24% since 2000, and of the children under 5 who were overweight or obese in 2019, around half lived in Asia. The long-term health of children, and by extension of adult populations worldwide, depend on tackling this issue now.

While not all marketing toward children is damaging, young people around the world are constantly — and increasingly — faced with advertisements for unhealthy food and drinks.

Children in the Philippines for example face a social media environment where over 99% of social media food marketing posts are not suitable for marketing to children according to the regional criteria set by the World Health Organization, and a study in Slovenia found that 96% of food advertisements shown during peak television hours for children aged 4 to 9 failed to meet WHO nutrient criteria for advertising to children.

This far-reaching exposure to harmful marketing translates into a serious impact on children’s health. A 2018 analysis of 39 studies, from 1980 to 2018, found that exposure to television advertising and “advergames” of food is linked to increased dietary calorie intake and increased body mass index in children, and a 2016 analysis found that marketing of unhealthy food and beverage increased dietary intake of, and preference for, low-quality food.

A child rights-based approach for better health

Children have a right to health and well-being, and a right to a childhood where they are enabled, supported, and encouraged to make healthy choices and to learn about and understand the risks of unhealthy ones — in nutrition and in all areas.

Protecting these rights means creating a context where making healthy choices are supported, and the cues toward unhealthy behaviors minimized. Currently, the sheer volume and reach of unhealthy and harmful marketing are pushing this balance too far in the wrong direction.

Self-regulation, where it exists, has not worked. Studies in Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Australia, to name but a few, have found marketing to children to still be heavily biased toward unhealthy and harmful practices, despite industry codes and agreements.

Several countries have taken strong action in mandating regulation of marketing to children. For example, in 2014 and 2016 respectively, Mexico and Chile introduced laws limiting the advertising of unhealthy foods to children on television. In Chilean law, this included advertisements on websites as well. The U.K. government plans to ban all advertising of food high in fat, sugar, and salt on television before 9 p.m., and to ban all marketing of these products online.

While some countries are taking exemplary actions to address the problem, both the breadth of the issue across multiple product areas and the increasingly transnational nature of the issue in terms of advertising that — intentionally or not — bleeds across borders, necessitate more unified and coordinated international standards between countries. In doing this, the primacy of children’s rights must be emphasized.

Recognition and regulation of unhealthy food marketing

Greater international recognition of the ways in which ubiquitous harmful commercial marketing stands in opposition to children’s right to health would be one important way to catalyze more collaborative action between governments, civil society, and families.

A child rights-based approach would demonstrate the universality of the issue, and of the need to protect children. In doing so it could help to strengthen the hand of governments, health agencies, and campaigners pushing for reform in the face of well-funded and organized industry pushback.

International recognition of young people’s rights in relation to harmful marketing, combined with guidance on how to implement standards to protect them, could also help to provide a useful framework for governments to build on for domestic policy, tailoring and adapting as their local context requires or allows, while also providing a level of international coordination.

Ultimately marketing is not about providing unbiased information; it is about persuading consumers to choose a product. Where those products cause harm — as we know they do in the case of unhealthy foods and beverages — we must recognize the urgency of protecting children from this persuasion.

Recognizing children’s rights to protection from harmful commercial marketing is a vital first step, and can serve as a bedrock for strong and internationally coordinated government action.

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