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 significance of the current and new CFBAI criteria is unknown because the relative importance of listed products in children’s diets has not been measured since CFBAI established uniform criteria. Using household scanner data linked to nutrition label data, the subrecipent will determine the contribution of products on the CFBAI list to purchases by households with children (0–8 years) and simulate the potential effects of reformulation resulting from the change in the criteria for 2020. Furthermore, the subrecipient will assess the relative importance of products on the CFBAI list to substitute products that do not satisfy the CFBAI criteria but are produced by the same manufacturers in terms of household purchases and pricing. The goals of this study are threefold: (1) measure the total contribution of products on the 2017 CFBAI list to calories, fat, sugar, fiber, and sodium in foods purchased in stores by U.S. households with children from 0–8 years using household-based scanner data; (2) calculate the change in the contributions of those products to calories and other nutrients in household food purchases if manufacturers reformulate them to meet the new criteria in 2020 and purchasing patterns remain unchanged; and (3) determine the relative importance of substitutes not included on the CFBAI list.
Age Groups: Adults and Families, Elementary-age children (grades K to 5), Preschool-age children (ages 3 to 5)
Resource Type: Commissioned Research Project Summary
Keywords: Digital marketing, Food advertising, Nutrition standards
Focus Area: Food Marketing
State: National
Related Research
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 MoreJuly 2022
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 MoreApril 2022