Abstract
Most food industry marketing in products targeted at children is found in packages of foods containing either excessive fat, sugar, or salt. This study audited all 5620 packaged foods available in a store of a large Brazilian supermarket chain and retrieved information from the nutrition facts tables on package labels. Products were photographed for further visual analysis to determine the presence of marketing strategies directed at children. Comparison of nutrient content per 100 g between children’s and non-children’s food products employed the Student t-test or the Mann–Whitney U-test (p-value < 0.05), due to the non-normal distribution of the nutritional composition data as verified through the Shapiro–Wilk test. Brazilian children’s food products from groups 4, 5, and 7 presented higher carbohydrate content than similar non-children’s products, while children’s food products from groups 1 and 7 presented lower fiber content. Results indicate that regulation on food labeling needs revising as it has not been effective in stopping the marketing of energy-dense nutrient-poor foods towards children.
Highlights
Before being made available to consumers, food products must be appropriately packaged to preserve the food and protect it against contamination
A food product was classified as a children’s product if at least one of the following marketing strategies was identified on the front-of-package label: words and phrases such as “child” or “ideal snack for your child”; cartoons, TV series, or film characters; own-brand characters; child celebrities; images of creatures; games or hobbies; colors or shapes that appeal to children; or free gifts
Marketing strategies directed at children were identified in 535 (9.5%) from the 5620 audited packaged foods available in the supermarket store
Summary
Before being made available to consumers, food products must be appropriately packaged to preserve the food and protect it against contamination. There is evidence that most food industry marketing that conveys fun and fantasy in products targeted at children is found in packages of foods containing either excessive fat, sugar, or salt Consumption of such foods has been increasing over the last decade and has been associated with a high incidence of overweight, obesity, and non-communicable diseases in children [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. The present study aimed to widen the range of evaluated food products, gathering data on the nutritional composition of the whole range of packaged foods available in a large Brazilian supermarket store, in order to compare the nutritional quality between children’s and non-children’s products This is relevant considering that Brazil, to other developing economies, has experienced an increasing trend towards the purchase and consumption of processed food products [15,18]. In 2009, the prevalence of overweight in 6–11-year-olds was 34% among boys, and 30% among girls, whilst obesity rates among 5–9-year-olds reached 15% [20]
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