The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued new guidance recommending that countries implement comprehensive mandatory policies to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages. The guidance aims to address the harmful impact of aggressive and pervasive marketing of foods high in fats, sugars, and salt (known as HFSS) to children, linked to unhealthy dietary choices.
“Aggressive and pervasive marketing of foods and beverages high in fats, sugars, and salt to children is responsible for unhealthy dietary choices,” said Dr. Francesco Branca, Director of the UN health agency’s Department of Nutrition and Food Safety. “Calls to responsible marketing practices have not had a meaningful impact.”
As such, he said governments should establish strong and comprehensive regulations.
COMPREHENSIVE POLICIES
The new guidance emphasizes the need for mandatory policies that cover children of all ages and focus on foods high in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, and/or salt. To be effective, these policies should be comprehensive, utilize a government-led nutrient profile model to classify restricted foods, and ensure that children are protected from marketing in various contexts.
The WHO acknowledges that food marketing remains a threat to public health, influencing children’s food choices, intended choices, and dietary intake. Therefore, policies to restrict food marketing should be implemented as part of a broader approach to creating supportive food environments. It is important for countries to adapt the WHO recommendations to their local contexts through local consultations while safeguarding public health policymaking from any conflicts of interest.
CONTEXT-DRIVEN POLICYMAKING
The UN organisation recommends these based on a systematic review of the evidence on policies to restrict food marketing, including on contextual factors. Policies to restrict food marketing are shown to be most effective if they are mandatory, protect children of all ages, and use a government-led nutrient profile model to classify foods to be restricted from marketing. They should also be sufficiently comprehensive.
CHILDREN-CENTRED POLICIES
WHO’s used the definition of a child from the Convention on the Rights of the Child to ensure that policies protect all children. The agency also updated recommendations for countries to use a nutrient profile model, which governments typically develop.
SUPPORTIVE FOOD ENVIRONMENTS
Policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing are best implemented as part of a comprehensive policy approach to create enabling and supportive food environments, the agency said.
To do this, adopting WHO recommendations and adapting them to local contexts require local consultations, with mechanisms in place to safeguard public health policymaking from undue influence by real, perceived, or potential conflicts of interest.
All WHO guidelines aim at supporting governments in creating healthy food environments to facilitate healthy dietary decisions, establish lifelong healthy eating habits, improve dietary quality, and decrease the risk of noncommunicable diseases worldwide, the agency said.
