LAGOS, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- Food environments, including how certain foods are promoted, marketed,and distributed, play a critical role in influencing a population’sdietary choices, especially those of vulnerable groups such as children
and adolescents.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an unhealthy food environment is one where healthy food are not readily available, accessible, or affordable, while unhealthy foods, largely ultra-processed, are promoted through various channels and strategies,making them more preferred and desirable over fresh, healthy, and nutritious options.
Empirical evidence shows that unhealthy marketing is powerful and highly persuasive, as it creates social norms around food, shapes lifestyles,and increases preference for diets that pose a grave threat to public health and workforce productivity.
hile traditional marketing has long been used to promote unhealthy foods, the increasing digitalization of food promotion has opened up new avenues for exploitation.
Platforms such as social media, mobile applications, video games, emails, and search engines are now being utilized to influence food choices,purchasing habits, and consumption patterns within households and across targeted groups.
Specifically, the promotion of manufactured food products such asnoodles, seasonings, snacks, confectioneries, and non-alcoholicbeverages adopts strategies such as premiums, cartoon characters, celebrity endorsers, branded toys, in-school marketing, television gameshows, outdoor games and events, radio jingles, competitions, and socialmedia ads on websites with huge traffic.
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These tactics focusing onhedonistic appeals rather than accurate providing accurate nutritionalinformation, increase children’s demand for junk foods and influence
family choices by leveraging the “pester power” phenomenon, wherechildren beg their parents or caregivers to purchase the advertisedunhealthy food.
Unsurprisingly, the consequences of these unhealthy marketing gimmicksare severe.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),millions of children worldwide are consuming more ultra-processed foodsthat are industrially formulated and often contain high levels of salt,sodium, sugar, and saturated fats, leading to devastating lifelongconsequences such as early exposure to hypertension, heart disease,diabetes, and cancers, among other Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) thatcould result in premature death.
To pushback against this trend, countries are responding by adoptingevidence-based recommendations from the WHO and UNICEF to enacteffective food regulations.
For example, the government of Chileintroduced food labelling and advertising laws as part of its strategy
to combat high rates of NCDs in the country.
These laws placed marketingrestrictions on fatty, high-sodium, sugary, or calorie-dense foods,particularly targeting children.
They also prohibited the advertisementof unwholesome foods on TV during child-friendly hours and on popular
children’s websites.
This initiative significantly reduced the exposureof preschoolers and adolescents to unhealthy food and beveragemarketing, without observable impacts on market outcomes, aggregateemployment, and wages within the affected industries.
Similarly, the United Kingdom applied comparable restrictions on fastfood advertising in broadcast media to improve their health indices andlimit such marketing to children.
Paid advertisements on social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, and X (formally Twitter) were also included in the ban.
Drawing from these examples and successes, the Nigerian government andconcerned policymakers can tackle the rising issue of NCDs in thecountry by adopting similar intervention and implementing mandatory
regulations to curb the marketing of unhealthy foods, particularlyhigh-sodium diets, to minors. This will include prohibiting themarketing of such foods within school environments, educational content,and child-centric spaces.
Furthermore, it is imperative to continuouslyeducate the public and enforce policies that promote comprehensive
front-of-pack warning labels on packaging, allowing consumers to makeinformed dietary choices.
Importantly, salt reduction is acost-effective public health strategy that demands a multi-sectoralapproach and coordinated strategies and actions to improve public healthoutcomes and national productivity.
As such, all stakeholders mustcontinue to put heads together to prioritize public health.
Bukola, a food scientist, is the Programme Officer, Sodium Reduction atCorporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA).