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Food and beverage marketing influences the diets and health of children and adolescents. In 2019, fast-food restaurants spent $5 billion in total advertising to children. Black and Hispanic youth are disproportionally targeted by unhealthy food and beverage advertising compared to their White peers. The foods and beverages most heavily marketed to youth are for unhealthy products, high in calories, sugar, fat, and/or sodium, that do not align with national recommendations for healthful diets. Research in this area examines how the elements of marketing—including product, price, placement, and promotion—influence the food and beverage preferences and choices of children and youth, as well as their weight status, and how such elements can be used to promote healthier eating.
Research & Publications See all
October 2021
Evidence-Based Recommendations and Best Practices for Promoting Healthy Eating Behaviors in Children 2 to 8 Years
Dietary recommendations are available about what to feed children ages 2 to 8 for optimal health, but relatively little guidance exists about how to feed those children. Because of the discrepancy between young children’s recommended and actual dietary intakes, there is a clear need for such guidance. To address this gap, Healthy Eating Research convened More
October 2021
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
October 2021
Strategies to Improve School Meal Consumption: A Systematic Review
This systematic review evaluates studies examining initiatives, interventions, and policies to increase school meal consumption. Following PRISMA guidelines, this review was conducted using four databases and resulted in a total of 96 studies. The research evidence supports the following strategies to increase school meal consumption: (1) offering students more menu choices; (2) adapting recipes to More
August 2021
Applying a Multi-Dimensional Digital Food and Nutrition Literacy Model to Inform Research and Policies to Enable Adults in the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to Make Healthy Purchases in the Online Food Retail Ecosystem
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-administered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) made substantial changes in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These changes highlight the need to identify the digital literacy skills and capacities of SNAP adults to purchase healthy groceries online. We conducted a scoping review of four electronic databases, Google More