Colombia Archives - Global Food Research Program

Food ads reach children using emotional and rational appeals on Colombian TV

Emily Busey — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 12:07:33 +0000

Research from Colombia that examined food advertising and marketing tactics used on television (TV) has found that children were frequently exposed to advertising that used emotional appeals such as characters, cartoons, games, or suggestions of fun or excitement to promote unhealthy foods. Girls were more likely than boys to see these emotional appeals, as were children from households in lower-socioeconomic groups vs. higher-socioeconomic groups.

In the study, published this month in Public Health Nutrition, researchers from the University of Kansas, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed over 500 top-viewed television advertisements (TV ads) for foods and beverages that aired on Colombian TV during 2017. For each ad, the researchers documented:

The type of product(s) promoted;
Each product’s nutritional quality;
The size of the ad’s child audience using TV audience ratings data for children 4–11 years old (including the biological sex and household socio-economic level of each child exposed to the ad); and
The type of marketing appeal(s) used in the ads, including rational appeals (e.g., highlighting the product’s cost, freshness, expert approval, or special ingredients) and emotional appeals (e.g., using cartoons, child actors, or other animations to attract children’s attention and associate the product with emotions like fun, excitement, or a sense of adventure).

They found that 78% of food ads were for products considered potentially harmful to health (i.e., products that were processed/ultra-processed, high in sugar, fats, or sodium, and/or contained non-caloric sweeteners). These are the nutrition standards used in Colombia’s new front-of-package warning label regulation, under which the products would currently be required to carry black, octagonal warning labels on their front-of-package. Of the ads for less-healthy products, 89% included an emotional appeal and 59% included a rational appeal, and over half (55%) used both rational and emotional appeals.

Dr. Alcides Velasquez

“The co-occurrence of both emotional and rational appeals in more than half of ads for products with lower nutritional quality is of special importance,” said the study’s first author Alcides Velasquez, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas.“Combining emotional appeals, which can generate a positive association with the experience of consuming the product, with rational appeals that highlight products’ nutritional or health advantages might result in children associating positive emotions and consumption sensations with purported nutritional benefits of products that are actually less healthy.”

Researchers also found differences in exposure that could contribute to health inequities: Girls and children from low-resource homes were exposed to significantly more appeals in TV ads than boys or children from higher-resource homes, respectively.

Key findings:

Among TV ads for foods or drinks, 78% featured products considered potentially harmful to health. These are products that are now required by law to carry front-of-package warning labels.
Nearly 90% of ads for these foods high in nutrients of concern employed an emotional appeal to children (e.g., characters, cartoons, animals, kids’ vocabulary).

Rational appeals (e.g., expert approval, cost, health, or specific ingredients) appeared to a lesser extent in 59% of the ads.

Girls and children in lower socio-economic groups were more exposed to emotional appeals in TV ads than boys or higher socio-economic strata counterparts, respectively.

Dr. Francesca Dillman Carpentier

“The new WHO guideline on policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing released this June pointed out the need for more research to examine inequities relating to food marketing, and this study shows clear inequities,” said senior author, Francesca Dillman Carpentier, W. Horace Carter Distinguished Professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. “The fact that we found these marked differences in marketing exposure based on socio-economic stratum and biological sex underscores the importance of developing comprehensive regulations that protect all children, not just a percentage of children, from unhealthy food marketing.”

In addition to being one of very few studies to examine differences in marketing exposure based on children’s socio-economic stratum and sex, this study establishes an important baseline measure of TV marketing and children’s exposure before Colombia implemented its front-of-package warning label law in December 2022 and ahead of its ultra-processed product taxes, which come into force in November 2023. While these policies do not include limits on marketing for foods and drinks that carry warning labels or will be taxed, changes to the Colombian food supply following the new regulations (i.e., reformulation of existing products or introduction of new, healthier alternatives) could lead to a smaller proportion of TV ads promoting foods and drinks that fail to meet nutritional standards.

This research was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Clinical and Translational Science Award program of the Division of Research Resources, National Institutes of Health.

AUTHORS

Alcides Velasquez
University of Kansas, USA

Maria Fernanda Parra
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Mercedes Mora-Plazas
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia

Luis Fernando Gómez
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Lindsey S. Taillie
UNC-Chapel Hill, USA

Francesca R. Dillman Carpentier
UNC-Chapel Hill, USA

RESOURCES

Read more about the evidence for restricting marketing for non-essential foods and drinks high in sugar, salt, saturated or trans fats, or calorie density.

Compare existing policies around the world aimed at restricting unhealthy food marketing to children.

MORE MARKETING RESEARCH FROM COLOMBIA:

Unhealthy food advertising disproportionately targets children in Colombia Read more…

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Nutrient warnings outperform other labels among Colombian adults: Results from a randomized controlled trial

Emily Busey — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 14:38:44 +0000

A study published today in PLOS ONE found that for Colombian adults, nutrient warning labels work better than two other common front-of-package (FOP) label types for discouraging consumption of ultra-processed foods.

The experiment

Researchers at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and UNC-Chapel Hill conducted a study involving over 8,000 Colombian adults. In this experiment, each participant was randomly assigned to one of four FOP label conditions:

An octagonal, stop sign nutrient warning label (below, left);
the industry-preferred voluntary Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) label (below, center);
A color-coded Nutri-Score label used voluntarily in a handful of European countries (below, right); or
No FOP label (control condition).

Study label conditions, from left: Warning label, Guideline Daily Amounts label, and Nutri-Score label.

Participants were asked to compare two fruit drinks with labels from their assigned group. One of the fruit drinks was healthier (contained naturally occurring and no added sugar), and one of the fruit drinks was less healthy (contained 39.4 grams of sugar and included added sugar). They were asked to pick the healthier product, choose which drink they thought was higher in sugar, and indicate which one they would rather buy.

Next, participants answered questions about other products (yogurt, cookies, sliced bread, and breakfast cereal) to see if they could correctly pick which ones were high in a nutrient of concern (e.g., sugar, saturated fat) and whether FOP labels discouraged them from wanting to consume the product. Finally, participants viewed all three label types and picked which one would discourage them most from wanting to consume the product.

Findings

Of the FOP label types tested, nutrient warning labels were most effective in each of these outcomes:

Participants who correctly identified products with excess sugar, saturated fat, or sodium:
- Nutrient warning labels: 75%
- GDA label: 43%
- Nutri-Score label: 26%
- No label: 23%.

Participants who felt discouraged from consuming a product high in sugar, saturated fat, or sodium:
- Nutrient warning labels: 72%
- GDA label: 20%
- Nutri-Score label: 9%.

Participants who chose the less healthy of two fruit drinks as the one they wanted to consume:
- Nutri-Score: 33%
- No label: 29%
- GDA label: 24%
- Nutrient warning label: 20%

The impact of the warning label on product selection was similar across education levels. This provides evidence that nutrient warning labels would not lead to increased disparities in product selection by education level.

This study builds on the team’s previous study published October, 2020 in Nutrients, which found that a “stop sign,” octagonal nutrient warning label (like those implemented in Chile, Peru, and Mexico) was more effective than a circular or triangular nutrient warning label at discouraging Colombian adults from wanting to buy ultra-processed products.

Importance

In July 2021, the Colombian government passed a new law — Ley Comida Chatarra (The Junk Food Law) — which has legislated mandatory front of package labeling for Colombia. Implementation of the junk food law must take place within one year of passage, and the regulatory norms, including final label design, are forthcoming. This study supports implementation of octagonal nutrient warning labels as the new mandatory FOP label in Colombia.

Funding support for this study was provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Additional support for some authors was provided by the National Institutes of Health.

AUTHORS:

Mercedes Mora-Plazas
Isabella C. A. Higgins
Luis Fernando Gomez
Marissa G. Hall
Maria Fernanda Parra
Maxime Bercholz
Nandita Murukutla
Lindsey Smith Taillie

RESOURCES:

Learn more about the evidence for front-of-package nutrient labels in our fact sheet.

View FOP label policies around the world in our front-of-package labeling policy maps.

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Unhealthy food advertising disproportionately targets children in Colombia

Courtney Mitchell — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 16:23:03 +0000

Children in Colombia are exposed to a disproportionate amount of television advertisements that market unhealthy foods and beverages, a practice which puts them at greater risk for obesity-related health issues as adults.

Researchers affiliated with the Global Food Research Program at UNC-Chapel Hill published the results of their new study, “Extent and nutritional quality of foods and beverages to which children are exposed in Colombian TV food advertising,” February 23, 2021 in Public Health Nutrition.

Francesca Dillman Carpentier and Lindsey Smith Taillie

UNC authors on the paper are Francesca Dillman Carpentier, PhD, W. Horace Carter Distinguished Professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and Lindsey Smith Taille, PhD, an assistant professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Collaborating with UNC researchers on the paper are authors from University of Kansas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.

The study looked at food and beverage ads on cable and over-the-air TV in Colombia in 2017 and evaluated the nutritional quality of the goods using the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) model for identifying products in excess of free sugars, sodium, or saturated fat or containing non-caloric sweeteners or trans-fat. Television audience ratings data were used to determine the average child audience per ad and the number of times ads were seen by children in a single week based on the type of food and its nutritional quality.

The researchers found 89.3% of all food and beverage ads promoted unhealthy or ultra-processed products, and children from all socioeconomic groups were all similarly exposed to these ads. Beverage and dairy products were the most advertised product categories to children, and 88% of these beverage and dairy products shown in ads were unhealthy. Most often, products advertised to children were found to be high in sugar, particularly beverage, dairy, bread and bakery products.

Dillman Carpentier says these findings on the prevalence of unhealthy foods and beverages advertised to Colombian children underscore the need for policies to regulate the marketing and advertising of food and beverage products to children.

“This study expands the scope of prior studies that examined food advertising in Latin America and uses the most comprehensive children’s television audience ratings data available,” says Dillman Carpentier. “The findings support prior research showing a higher prevalence of TV ads for unhealthy products in Colombia and are similar to findings in Chile, which showed that children’s exposure to TV ads for unhealthy foods was much greater than their exposure to ads for healthy products before Chile began regulating unhealthy food marketing to children.”

The Global Food Research Program is a project of the Carolina Population Center and collaborates with partners across the globe to carefully evaluate food and nutrition policies and help to develop in-depth, longitudinal research on large-scale obesity prevention efforts.

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As neighboring countries see a shift in nutrition, Colombia’s food supply hasn’t changed

Courtney Mitchell — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 13:21:28 +0000

New research shows that sustained debate around improving nutrition isn’t enough to change a country’s food supply, nor are the nutrition policies of its peers.

Caitlin Lowery

In a study of Colombia’s packaged foods and beverages, researchers in the Global Food Research Program at UNC-Chapel Hill found that, though the country is exploring similar food policies to those of neighboring countries Peru and Chile, Colombia’s top-selling packaged foods have seen little change in the way they are formulated.

In “Reformulation of Packaged Foods and Beverages in the Colombian Food Supply,” published Oct. 24 in Nutrients, authors examined nutritional information of top-selling products among processed/ultra-processed foods and beverages from the largest supermarket chains in Bogota, Colombia, between 2016 and 2018. While calories in beverages declined sharply, calories in food products remained relatively stable.

“Our paper highlights that, in the absence of mandatory policy regulations, very little is changing, at least among food products. Nutrition policies in neighboring countries like Peru do not seem to have an effect on the Colombian food supply, so if Colombian policymakers are concerned about the consumption of nutrients of concern like sugar, saturated fat and sodium, they will likely need to take action at the national level,” says lead author Caitlin Lowery, a doctoral student in nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Other Gillings School authors include Barry Popkin, PhD, W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition, and Lindsey Smith Taillie, PhD, assistant professor of nutrition. Mercedes Mora-Plazas, MSc, of the National University of Colombia, and Luis Fernando Gómez, MD, MPH, of Pontifical Xavierian University, are also co-authors.

As part of national obesity-prevention efforts, both Chile and Peru have enacted taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) and marketing regulations such as mandatory front-of package warning labels for products high in nutrients of concern. Though Colombia has not yet passed such policies as these neighboring countries, it shares many of the same food suppliers with those nations. Researchers sought to find whether there might be spillover effects from other countries’ policies or whether the ongoing legislative debate in Colombia might drive manufacturer reformation.

The one area where researchers saw change was in beverage formulation, with reductions in the sugar content of beverages and increase in the use of non-nutritive sweeteners. One reason is a self-regulation pledge made by several of the dominant beverage manufacturers, which Lowery says is a strategy that has been used in other contexts to avoid more restrictive government regulation.

“It may be easier for beverage companies to reformulate products from a technical perspective, as you don’t have the same concerns around product consistency or other properties that you might have with foods, and it may be that companies are more concerned about the possibility of a successful SSB tax, since that could have a more direct effect on revenue, as compared to labels or other policies.”

The study highlights the need for comprehensive policies that include mandatory regulations and laws to make substantial changes in the quantities of nutrients of concern among food products in Colombia.

Lowery notes that “passing these policies is an uphill battle. The food and beverage industry has put a lot of effort into fighting these policies.”

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Colombia: Study predicts less sugary drink consumption with tax

Bridget Hollingsworth — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 18:46:15 +0000

GFRP researchers predict a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Colombia would lead to a decrease in purchases of those sugary drinks and a move toward healthier food choices in a new study published online December 20 in PLOS One.

Juan Carlos Caro and team used data from the Colombia National Income and Expenditures Survey to estimate the price elasticities of consumer demand for sugar-sweetened beverages. They projected that a 20 percent tax on sugary beverages would decrease purchases by 32 percent and raise $480million USD in government revenue by 2020. This increased revenue could be utilized for public health projects and priorities in Colombia.

Read the full research article here or the press release from UNC here.

The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) posted a report on this study on their website on January 10, 2018, highlighting:

Obesity and overweight prevalence have increased dramatically in Colombia in recent years, and a large body of prior research makes it clear that sugar-sweetened beverages such as sodas and fruit drinks are a major contributor to these health problems.

Colombia is not alone in this. Countries around the world are implementing tax policies to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Building on this momentum, a team of researchers estimated how purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages and other foods might change, as well as how government revenue might be affected, should similar fiscal measures be implemented in Colombia. (Such taxes have been discussed in the country, but have not yet been passed).

*** Post updated January 18, 2018 to reflect ASPPH report posted online.

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