Introduction
This book will examine research and public policy issues concerning food advertising. Food manufacturers and distributors are among the biggest promoters and marketers of any product category in the mainstream mass media and on other major promotional platforms. The food and non-alcoholic drinks industries buy extensive advertising space on television, radio, on cinema screens, in print media and increasingly online. Their products are prevalent in many major retail outlets and reach people daily through billboards and posters distributed throughout many outdoor and indoor physical environments through which many people pass each day or on the sides of public transportation. Food advertising is ubiquitous. This phenomenon is not in itself illegal, but it has become the source of wider public-policy debate and a target for government intervention when considered in the wider context of emergent food habits and their public health consequences. It is in the latter context that this book takes up its review and analysis. Table 1.1 presents an overview of the topics this book will examine.
Table 1.1
Synopsis of the structure of the book
Chapter 1: What are the Concerns about Food Advertising? This chapter presents an overview of the key issues linked to food advertising in the broader context of growing concerns about adult and childhood overweight and obesity. Food advertising has been identified as a primary target for government intervention. The rationale for this action is that food advertising is believed to shape children’s orientations towards food and that most advertising for food products is dominated by energy-dense products deemed to have poor nutritional quality. Chapter 2: What is the Balance of Evidence for the Effects of Food Advertising? Major reviews of social scientific research evidence have been conducted over the past 20 years, many of which were sponsored by national governments, national or regional health authorities or international health-advisory and policy-making bodies. These reviews have, therefore, influence policy-makers’ thinking about the regulation of food advertising. At the same time, these reviews have produced mixed evidence for the effects of food advertising on children’s food choices, preferences and habits and for the specific effects of food advertising on the health and well-being of consumers. Chapter 3: What is the Potential for Exposure to Food Advertising? Before food advertising can exert direct influences on consumers, they must be exposed to its messages. This chapter examines empirical evidence about the opportunities for food advertising exposure. This evidence derives extensively from audits of the presence of food advertising in different media as well as the media consumption patterns of consumers. The evidence is quite compelling about the prevalence of food advertising. This is especially true of television, which remains the most important advertising medium for the food industries. There is also clear evidence from a number of countries that programmes that are popular with children are frequently laden with food advertisements and that these advertisements are mainly for energy-dense food products. Such evidence, therefore, opens up real possibilities for products deemed unhealthy to have high visibility to children. Chapter 4: Food Advertising; Informative, Misleading or Deceptive? Once exposed to food advertisements, those messages must present content that will have specific effects on consumers. This chapter examine the nature of the information and persuasive content of food advertisements to determine the possible effects that might flow from them. Do food advertisements present information that can help consumers determine their health value? Do these advertisements focus on making brands look appealing without any indication as to whether they could form part of a healthy diet? Does the food sector provide misleading information about their products? These questions are examined through relevant empirical evidence to take us a step further towards defining the possible effects that food advertisements could have on consumers. |
Chapter 5: Does Food Advertising Influence People’s Food Preferences? Ultimately, what policy makers, parents and other interested stakeholders need to know is whether food advertising actually influences consumers’, and especially children’s, food preferences and choices. This chapter shifts attention from potential to actual outcomes of food-advertising exposure. The investigation of food-advertising effects has been conducted through a number of methodologies. Some of these can demonstrate causal connections between food advertising and food choices, while others can simply identify where there are statistical associations between them. Insights can also be gleaned from more impressionistic studies in which consumers offer up their own insights into food advertisements and whether they believe their food tastes and preferences might be shaped by them. The evidence base contains findings that suggest food advertising influences and that render this conclusion less certain. It is important for policy-makers to go beyond simply looking at the findings and to ask serious questions about whether specific studies stand up to critical scrutiny or are based on a type of research that is capable of demonstrating food-advertising influences. Chapter 6: Does Food Advertising Affect People’s Health and Well-Being? Food advertisements are designed to promote food brands by make them more visible and by imparting persuasive appeals to consumers that render those brands more attractive. In more general terms, however, how important are food advertisements as agents that can influence the general health and well-being of consumers. It is possible that food advertisements could persuade people to buy and use specific brands, but do they represent a major source of social influence over an individual’s entire diet. It is that diet that is more significant when considering how eating habits might impact upon general health status. Chapter 7: How Important are Other Factors in Understanding Consumers’ Responses to Food Promotion? Food advertisements do not operate alone to provide information to people about foods. Even if they can exert certain influences over individuals’ food preferences, it is impossible to ignore the influences of other social and cultural factors. Although this book does not provide a detailed examination of those factors, the current chapter asks whether social scientists interested in the specific effects of food advertisements have always take sufficient account within their research study designs of the effects of these other, extraneous factors. If they have not, is this a problem for the veracity of their evidence? If they have, has this been done with sufficient flare and skills that adequate controls for other variables were deployed? Chapter 8: What Regulatory Challenges Does Food Advertising Present? The focus on regulation of food advertising stems from a belief that it makes a real difference to consumers’, and especially children’s, food choices and habits. To what extent, however, do politicians and other policy makers in this field appear to call upon valid research to inform any adjustments they make to food promotions regulations and codes of practice? Is there an overblown expectation that greater food marketing restrictions will produce real social changes in people’s food habits? Is the effectiveness of specific public policies adequately assessed? |
The Fundamental Health Problem
One of the most serious and persistent problems facing the world today is to ensure that people consume a healthy diet. While in some parts of the world the central issue is that there is not enough food to go around and that people do not have enough to eat, in many others the main concern is that people eat too much. Excessive food consumption, especially when coupled with diminishing levels of physical activity, has become more common around the world and underpins an increased prevalence of overweight and obesity. This phenomenon, in turn, can have important health consequences that are bad for citizens and consumers and create heavy financial burdens for societies whose health authorities must pick up the pieces. It is understandable that authorities seek to tackle this growing public health and well-being problem and equally that governments that may be in office for only limited terms should seek quick solutions. Political agendas and needs have, therefore, often driven governments to seek solutions that are most readily attainable through the most visible actions.
Trying to reverse deep-seated cultural norms associated with eating might prove difficult and require long-term strategies and actions that far exceed standard terms of political office. The solutions required here might often need subtle interventions that do not readily lend themselves to bold political statements about outcomes. Finding targets that appear to be (and indeed may in fact be) part of the problem that can be addressed more directly and swiftly, therefore, has great political appeal. Hence, food-marketing practices have come within the sights of governments, often at the urging of international health organisations. Since these practices are presumed to play a part in shaping people’s food preferences and habits and in turn appear to promote unhealthy food-related behaviours, then it makes perfect sense to tighten up controls over food promotions to reduce at least one set of factors believed to work against the well-being of a society’s population.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published figures revealing that the prevalence of being overweight or obese has reached worrying proportions among adult and child populations around the world. The basic nature of the problem has been stated in simple terms. The conditions of being overweight or obese result from an imbalance between food energy intake and energy expenditure. If we absorb more calories through food than we burn off through activity, we gain weight. Researchers from many disciplines across the medical and social sciences have further identified multiple genetic, family-related, social and cultural factors at play in relation to why this state of affairs should arise in the first place. One of the key areas that governments and health authorities have focused on most has been the way food and non-alcoholic drinks products are presented and promoted to consumers.
The overweight and obesity problem is global. Although food availability and affordability, family eating practices, and physical activity levels can all vary from one culture to the next, a consistent trend towards increased weight gain across many societies both among adults and children, has led health authorities to seek global explanations. Very often these explanations have focused a great deal—fairly or unfairly—on the actions of the food and drinks industries. It is not the intention of this book to demonise food manufacturers and distributors. Yet national governments and health regulators and other international health advisory and policy-making organisations frequently do.
This is not to say that the marketing activities of the food and drinks industries have no impact of relevance in the context of the status of the health and well-being of consumers. There is little doubt, however, that they are easy targets for governments seeking quick fixes to social problems through highly visible solutions. If the ultimate objective of national governments is to take steps to improve the health and well-being of their populations as a function of changing eating habits, then it is important to address the causal agents that are most significant and not simply the ones that are publicly the most visible.
Food Has Become More than Just Nourishment
We need food to survive, but in societies where food is plentiful choices are more susceptible to higher-level human needs, such as esteem. In a commoditised world, foods are defined not simply by the nutritional qualities but also by a much bigger social brand image. As with other commodities, there is a social status factor at play with food as well. Some social groups make a point of preferring specific types of foods. Food marketers enter this social arena as well and develop versions or variants of foods that are promoted as ideal for specific consumer groups. This marketing process effectively encourages consumers to make decisions about the purchase of foods on the basis of ‘brands’. Brands represent distinguishing names or labels that help us to differentiate variants of the same type of foodstuff in markets in which many different variants are available. There is nothing inherently wrong with brands or branding processes. They help consumers differentiate between product variants. This can be very important in crowded and competitive marketplaces that offer many food variant choices.
Brands convey messages about the physical qualities of the product, but also about the type of person who makes particular kinds of food variant selections. Brand reputations are learned by us as food consumers. This learning takes place from our parents and other family members with whom we are brought up as children, from our friendship and peer groups, and also from the promotional activities of the food production, ...