Food Environments and Marketing
Understanding food environments.
If children aren’t eating the right foods, why can’t parents, or even children themselves, simply choose to prepare and eat healthier foods?
The answer lies in understanding food environments.
When we look at a food environment, in other words all of the factors that influence a family’s food choice – from what is available in their area, to how much money they have, to what foods are convenient or familiar – we see that diets are far from being a matter of simple personal preference.
Families living in cities typically buy their food, so their income often determines what they eat. They are more likely to shop at supermarkets, where much of the food is packaged or ultra-processed. For the urban poor, access to healthy food is even scarcer, and many rely on street food laden with fat and salt.
Some families in urban areas live in ‘food deserts’, or neighbourhoods where fresh produce and healthy food markets are nowhere to be found. Others live in ‘food swamps’, where unhealthy choices like fast food and chain restaurants overwhelm and underprice the number of healthy options.
Time and convenience are also factors. A single parent may struggle to both work and put healthy food on the table. Rural women in particular are often forced to balance unpaid farm work with their role as primary caregivers. As children grow, the main influences on their diet shift gradually from parents and other caregivers in the early years to the staff of day-care centres or other care providers for young children. When children enter school, their peers and friends hold more influence.
One important aspect of the food environment, and a major influence on a child’s diet, is food marketing. Advertisements, food packaging and digital campaigns targeted at children are building demand for junk food, fast food and sugary drinks. This rise in food marketing is directly linked to the increase in childhood obesity.
Children are exposed to a huge volume of marketing for unhealthy foods every day. A recent study conducted across 22 countries found that for every advertisement for healthy foods, there were four promoting unhealthy foods. This disparity is even greater in high-income countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.
Lower-income countries are also seeing a rapid rise in unhealthy food consumption. From 2011 to 2016, fast-food sales grew by 113 per cent in India, 83 per cent in Viet Nam and 64 per cent in Egypt.
In comparison to traditional television and print marketing, digital marketing poses a unique challenge. Globally, one in three internet users is estimated to be a child. With the rise of smartphones, food marketers have a direct channel for advertising that can precisely target children and is available to them almost all of the time.
Without effective regulation, this constant stream of food marketing – on TV, in print, on digital channels – is impossible for children to escape. Government legislation appears to be the most effective way to reduce unhealthy food sales, and the World Health Organization urges governments to commit to ending childhood obesity by using proven approaches to promote better nutrition and regulate the marketing of unhealthy food to children.
