Regulating harmful marketing to children

Research into children's exposure to marketing campaigns promoting unhealthy food and alcoholic beverages.

Children are known to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of marketing. Despite unequivocal evidence that unhealthy food and alcohol marketing negatively influences their consumption preferences, purchase requests, and dietary patterns, children continue to be exposed to comprehensive, multifaceted, integrated, and increasingly immersive marketing campaigns promoting unhealthy food and alcoholic beverages.

The Law & NCD Unit has built a unique expertise in the regulation of food and alcohol marketing and has been involved in key policy initiatives assisting international organisations, public health agencies, States and non-governmental organisations worldwide in the implementation of the WHO set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children and the WHO Global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol, which the Member States of the World Health Assembly unanimously endorsed in May 2010.

We are particularly grateful to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) who supported Professor Amandine Garde’s work on the regulation of food marketing to children back in 2013 and allowed her to spend a period of time at the World Health Organization in Geneva and Cairo (Grant Number: ES/J020761/1). This project was instrumental in the direction our work has taken since.

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