Food marketing to children needs rules with teeth

In the spring of 2021, BEUC and 10 of our member organisations collected examples of unhealthy food and drink marketing and advertising. We selected those which we deemed to be infringing leading EU food and beverage companies’ commitment to market their products responsibly towards children. We brought these cases to the accountability Mechanism of the EU Pledge, the EU-level industry self-regulatory initiative to restrict unhealthy foodmarketing. 

Out of the 81 complaints we submitted, only 14 were successful.1 Indeed, as our report shows, the marketing restrictions prescribed by the EU Pledge are so weak that they give a lot of leeway to food and drink companies to continue marketing unhealthy products to children. Here are the EU Pledge’s main shortcomings:

• Nutrition criteria are too lax and still permit foods which are high in fats, salt, and sugar to be marketed to children.
• Rules only affect children’s TV programmes, when in fact children watch most those shows not specifically directed at them (prime-time shows).
• Rules are neither suited to address the world of digital marketing nor do they effectively address the significant amount of offline marketing − such as on the packaging − which children continue to be exposed to.

With ample evidence that self-regulation is failing  to adequately protect children from unhealthy food marketing and advertising, it is high time the EU adopted binding rules including: 

• An online ban for the marketing of unhealthy food products, including food company websites and social media accounts.
• A 6am-11pm TV watershed to stop the broadcast of unhealthy food advertising when children watch TV the most.
• A ban on the use of marketing techniques appealing to children on food packaging (e.g., cartoon characters and brand mascots).

These rules should apply to children up to the age of 18, and the World Health Organisation nutrient profiling model should be used to determine which foods should not be advertised to children.