By Jennifer Myers
As early as the 1950s, sugary cereals in the grocery store were targeting children. Today, the practice of marketing food to children has proliferated throughout the entire supermarket—from dinosaur-shaped processed cheese, “fun-bites” fruit snacks, and Crush-able yogurt to Dino-egg “hatching” oatmeal.
“In 2006, food and beverage companies in North America spent $1.6 billion advertising food directly to children, using the full range of promotional techniques,” says Communications Studies professor Dr. Charlene Elliott, who was recently awarded a new Canada Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Food Marketing, Policy and Children’s Health. “My program of research seeks to explore the complex nature of children’s food marketing to study what it means – in terms of dietary habits and health – to promote food using particular types of marketing appeals. “
Holding the first-ever CHIR CRC chair to be awarded in the Faculty of Arts, Elliott will examine children’s understanding of food, media and nutrition messages, and investigate Canada’s regulatory environment with respect to food policy and food labeling. While the nutritional profile of child-targeted food is important, Elliott is equally interested in creating an understanding of the types of relationships children develop with food as a result of marketing. This is because child-targeted foods are sold on the basis of ‘fun’ and entertainment.
“Behavior modification programs for obese adults pivot on the cardinal rule that food should never be used as entertainment, sport or distraction… themes that form the core of children’s food. This point should not be glossed over. Popular weight loss programs such as Weight Watchers emphasize that particular relationships with food—eating for entertainment or distraction—work to make adults fat. Yet the very eating practices that are widely acknowledged to lead to excess weight in adults are precisely the eating practices being taught to children through the messages of fun food. Since eating practices are formed early on, and persist over time, this is problematic.”
Elliott, who holds a joint appointment in Kinesiology and is co-director of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute’s Healthy Living program, has grounded her program of research on two previous CIHR-funded grants. As part of this, she has analysed the nutritional profile of foods marketed to children, examined the use of front-of-pack nutrition claims, examined sodium levels (and targets) in toddler foods and children’s food and assessed the line-up of ‘better-for-you’ products currently on the supermarket shelves. Elliott has also conducted focus groups with children (and interviews with parents) across Canada to probe their understanding of food marketing, child-targeted foods, nutrition and nutrition messages. One of the most interesting findings, says Elliott, pertains to how food marketing has impacted how children classify food in a more general sense, in terms of what they consider to be ‘for them’ and what they consider to be ‘for others’.
“We asked over 250 children ‘what is kids’ food?’ and, then ‘what is adult food?’” Elliott notes. “When children think of ‘kid’s food’ they generally think of junk food, sugar, sugary cereals and the fun shapes and unusual colours characterizing much of contemporary child-oriented packaged food. When children think of ‘adult food’, they think of fruits, vegetables and meat. In short, ‘adult foods’ are generally the unprocessed fruits, vegetables and meats that all North Americans should be consuming more of, while ‘kids’ foods’ are associated with processed, high-sugar, low-nutrient edibles. The interesting point, I think, is that this type of questioning moves beyond the nutritional profile of a specific food to explore the social significance of what it means to market foods in a particular way.”
With 26 percent of children being overweight or obese, Canada has one of the highest rates of childhood obesity in the developed world. Elliott’s work will result in recommendations for food marketing policies, including nutrition labeling, as well as probing the complex relationship between nutrition literacy and media literacy—which are often at odds when it comes to children’s food.
********This article was originally published in ARTSNow by Jennifer Myers