Marketing Matters: White Paper Companion Guides

Imagine a community where healthy food marketing is the norm: Billboards, signs, and bus advertisements promote water rather than sugary drinks, and TV, radio, and internet ads publicize local deals on fresh produce.

Child care settings and schools follow nutrition standards and are free of junk food marketing, and government vending machines provide healthy snacks. Restaurants and stores have no advertising in their windows, and they discount healthy items and offer nutritious children’s meals.

In reality, unhealthy marketing is disturbingly pervasive, and often targets youth. Young children are particularly impressionable, and these marketing tactics lead kids to nag their parents or caregivers until they buy unhealthy foods. Kids can then develop a preference for foods that are bad for them – a preference that can last a lifetime. For that reason, policymakers, community organizations, and parents may want to address unhealthy marketing to children, but may not know where to begin.

ChangeLab Solutions, through a contract with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and funding from First 5 Los Angeles, developed Marketing Matters: A White Paper on Strategies to Reduce Unhealthy Food Marketing to Young Children to help local jurisdictions understand how they can regulate the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to kids, particularly those under age five.

In addition, this comprehensive toolkit includes several easy-to-use handouts. All are available in English and Spanish! 

• A Guide for Community Groups: This handout provides community groups with strategies for addressing the problem of food marketing to young children. 
• A Guide for Parents: This handout provides parents with strategies for addressing the problem of food marketing to young children. 
• A Guide for Policymakers: This handout provides policymakers with strategies for addressing the problem of food marketing to young children. 
• Policy Options to Address Unhealthy Food and Beverage Marketing to Children: This handout provides a list of policy options to address food marketing to young children, and indicates their legal feasibility.