Australian children exposed to aggressive marketing on ultra-processed food, new study finds

The study, published in Public Health Nutrition, sheds light on Australia’s regulatory gaps in food marketing and compares them to lower-income countries with stricter rules.

“Australia mainly relies on voluntary codes for restricting unhealthy food marketing, but these primarily relate to mass media advertising, and packaging is a neglected part of the promotional toolkit,” Simone Pettigrew, one of the co-authors of the study and head of food policy at the George Institute for Global Health, tells Food Ingredients First.

The paper analyzed 8,006 products across various categories, revealing that 11.3% featured on-pack promotions directed at children, with the majority (81%) falling under the classification of UPF.

“By comparison, countries such as Chile and Mexico have introduced explicit restrictions on food packaging content to ensure children and parents are not being manipulated at the expense of children’s diets and health,” Pettigrew continues.

Food Ingredients First