Pitching food to kids

Study explores links between marketing and obesity

By Jennifer Myers

According to the Standing Committee on Health, childhood obesity has reached epidemic status in Canada. To help understand more about it, Charlene Elliot, a professor in the Faculty of Communication and Culture, has been awarded a $150,000 Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant to conduct a three-year national study on child and parental responses to food products marketed specifically to kids.

“The research will assess the relationship between food marketing and childhood obesity,” explains Elliott. “It aims to get a fuller ‘read’ on the socio-cultural determinants of health by exploring how children’s food marketing impacts children’s food preferences, dietary habits and nutrition.”
Elliott’s project builds on her previous CIHR-funded study, which analyzed the marketing of “fun foods” in the Canadian supermarket.

“Such foods, which are specifically designed to be appealing to children, tend to present food as edible entertainment,” says Elliott. “Understanding how children and their parents respond to these marketing messages in terms of purchasing and consumption habits can help us to create effective strategies and policy recommendations for combating childhood obesity.”

In this new study, Elliott will identify whether certain populations of children—such as younger children, overweight children or those from a lower socio-economic status—are more vulnerable to food marketing.