Research & Publications | Healthy Eating Research

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Reducing Student Exposure to Digital Food and Beverage Marketing: Policy and Practice Recommendations

Digital marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents is pervasive, highly effective, undermines healthy eating, and contributes to health inequities. Expanded use of electronic devices and remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the urgency for policy interventions to limit digital food marketing in schools and on school-issued devices. The US More

Keywords: Digital marketing

Date: March 2023

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Food Marketing School & After School

Reducing Student Exposure to Digital Food and Beverage Marketing

Digital marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents is pervasive and undermines healthy eating. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ time spent online for both recreation and school using educational technology doubled from 3.8 to 7.7 hours per day for 12- to13-year-olds, and racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities widened with children of color More

Keywords: Digital marketing

Date: July 2022

Resource Type: Report

Focus Areas: Food Marketing School & After School

Food Marketing Practices of Major Online Grocery Retailers in the United States, 2019-2020

Food marketing influences consumers’ preferences for and selection of marketed products. Although a substantial body of research has described food-marketing practices in brick-and-mortar stores, no research has examined food marketing in online grocery retail despite its growing importance as a source of food-at-home purchases. This study aimed to develop and apply a coding instrument to More

Date: April 2022

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Food Marketing Food Retail

Child-Directed Marketing, Health Claims, and Nutrients in Popular Beverages

Fruit drinks are a major source of added sugar in children’s diets. This study describes the associations between front-of-package child-directed marketing (i.e., sports, fantasy, or child-directed imagery; child-directed text) and (1) health-related claims and (2) nutrient content of fruit drinks, 100% juices, and flavored waters. Beverage purchase data from a national sample of 1,048 households More

Date: April 2022

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Beverages Early Childhood Food Marketing

Kid Influencer Marketing: Gaps in Current Policies and Research

Most food advertisements that children see are for unhealthy foods and beverages. Paying “influencers”—online celebrities with large social media fan bases—to endorse or promote products on their social media accounts is a relatively new tool that companies use to market their products. Engaging kid influencers has the added bonus of reaching younger audiences. Kids may More

Date: March 2022

Resource Type: Research Brief

Focus Areas: Food Marketing

Assessing the Public Health Impacts of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative

The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) is a voluntary industry initiative in which companies commit to featuring only foods meeting specific nutrition criteria in advertising directed primarily to children under age 12. New criteria that were announced in 2018 and went into effect in 2020 strengthened the nutrition standards and changed the criteria More

Date: October 2021

Resource Type: Report

Focus Areas: Diet Quality & Healthy Weight Food Marketing

Changes in Beverage Availability and Targeted Marketing Associated with the Philadelphia Beverage Tax

The goal of this study is to provide much needed scientific evidence about whether the Philadelphia beverage tax is associate with changes in beverage availability and targeted marketing, with a focus on drinks commonly consumed by children ages 0-5 and Black and Latinx households with young children. Specific aims include: (1) Compare changes in retail More

Date: April 2021

Resource Type: Grant Summary

Focus Areas: Beverages Early Childhood Food Marketing Food Retail

A Rapid Review of Stocking and Marketing Practices Used to Sell Sugar-Sweetened Beverages in U.S. Food Stores

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are a primary source of added sugars in the American diet. Habitual SSB consumption is associated with obesity and noncommunicable disease and is one factor contributing to U.S. health disparities. Public health responses to address marketing-mix and choice-architecture (MMCA) strategies used to sell SSB products may be required. Thus, our goal was More

Date: December 2020

Resource Type: Journal Article

Focus Areas: Beverages Food Marketing

Reducing Digital Marketing of Infant Formulas

Breastfeeding protects against overweight and obesity, asthma, eczema, and type-II diabetes, and has long-term health benefits for women. The health benefits of breastfeeding are so valuable that in 1981, the World Health Organization established the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes (WHO Code) that prohibits marketing infant formula to the public. The U.S. has More

Date: November 2020

Resource Type: Report

Focus Areas: Early Childhood Food Marketing

Understanding the Public Health Significance of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative

The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) is a voluntary industry initiative in which companies commit to feature only foods meeting specific nutrition criteria in advertising directed primarily to children under age 12. Uniform nutrition criteria were originally established in 2011, and new criteria will go into effect in January 2020. The public health More

Date: January 2020

Resource Type: Commissioned Research Project Summary

Focus Areas: Food Marketing