Hussman and Gillings collaboration finds food marketing regulations in Chile are reducing child-targeted packaging

Food marketing regulations can effectively reduce child-targeted packaging on unhealthy food products, suggests a new study of regulations in Chile by researchers from UNC Hussman and Gillings School of Global Public Health. Hussman professor Francesca Dillman Carpentier, the W. Horace Carter Distinguished Professor of journalism and media, and Gillings assistant professor of nutrition Dr. Lindsey Smith Taillie have been collaborating to study the effects of food marketing on nutrition and health in Chile and elsewhere since 2015. The study, done with Hussman doctoral student Fernanda Mediano Stoltze, was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. It used pictures of cereal packages taken from top supermarket chains in Santiago and examined the differences in packaging before and after Chile implemented stringent food marketing regulations in 2016. Chile has very high rates of obesity and junk food intake, at levels similar to the United States, and has implemented some of the most stringent food marketing regulations in the world. Carpentier, Taillie and Stoltze found that before the Chilean Food Advertising and Labeling Law in 2016, 43% of cereals that exceeded nutrition thresholds used child-directed strategies on their packaging. After the food regulations took hold, that percentage fell to 15%.
Read more about their collaboration from The Gillings School of Global Public Health and get the full study here.