How food marketing to kids is harming their health and what we can do [PODCAST]

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Join Manuel Arango, the director of Health Policy & Advocacy at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. We dive into the pressing issue of food marketing to children, exploring how these strategies impact kids’ health and dietary habits. Manuel shares insights into the ongoing efforts to regulate unhealthy food and beverage marketing in Canada, why it’s crucial for the government to act, and how parents can navigate the challenges posed by aggressive marketing tactics.

Manuel Arango is the director of Health Policy & Advocacy at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

He discusses the KevinMD article, “Why my 5-year-old is helping with my PhD thesis.”

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome Manuel Arango. He’s the director of health policy and advocacy at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Today’s KevinMD article is “Why my 5-year-old is helping with my PhD thesis.” Manuel, welcome to The Podcast by KevinMD.

Manuel Arango: Great to be here.

Kevin Pho: All right, we’ll get into that article in a little bit. First off, briefly share your story and journey.

Manuel Arango: Absolutely. So I’ve been at Heart and Stroke for over twenty-five years and have to say that a good portion of that time at Heart and Stroke has been dedicated to nutrition policy and advocacy. So we do a lot of other things, for sure, such as tobacco control, vaping control, nicotine control, drug access, encouraging physical activity, etc. But I think my organization is known for its focus on nutrition policy. So that’s our niche, basically.

And in particular, I have to say that what we’ve been really interested in is health-promoting environments. So that’s the way we believe that you can truly change individual behavior, as opposed to a program or a brochure, etc., to provide information. So what I mean by health-promoting environments is environments that make the healthy choice the easy choice.

Examples of that are things like changing the pricing environment, having healthy food cheaper than the unhealthy food, the junk food. Having a point-of-sale environment, such as a grocery store, where kids can’t see unhealthy cereals at eye level. Marketing environments, ensuring kids aren’t bombarded with unhealthy food and beverages in different environments. And even things like mandatory reformulation of food. In the United States, just like in Canada, trans fats, industrial trans fats, were banned. So that’s a really effective way to change the food environment versus really pushing an individual to make different choices. So that’s been a big focus for us.

Kevin Pho: All right, let’s talk about this KevinMD article, “Why my 5-year-old is helping with my PhD thesis.” So what led your organization to write this article? And tell us about the article itself.

Manuel Arango: For sure. So the one thing, certainly when it comes to advocacy in public health or in any area, it’s important for not just one organization to be front and center in the advocacy. You got to have a broad swath of society, civil society, behind you, and others. So using youth front and center.

So Julia Chen, the author of this article, is a member of our Heart and Stroke Marketing to Kids Youth Council. And we like to use youth, people with lived experience, academics, experts, other health organizations, even sometimes certain industry groups, if they’re aligned with us. So that’s why we wanted Julia to do this for us, because people really pay attention when you have an article written by a member of youth, and she’s a parent also. So that really resonates with the public.

So in the article, the focus, for sure, is just underscoring the extent and breadth to which kids are bombarded with the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages. It’s everywhere, in social media, on the internet, in advergames and video games. The list goes on and on.

So in other places, for example, in the province of Quebec, they’ve tried to address this with some success. In Chile and the U.K., there’s been some early success. So we know, basically, that when it comes to the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to kids, like a lot of other health issues, sometimes industry self-regulatory initiatives, they’re not enough. You need to have government intervention to change the environment, whether it’s legislation or regulations.

So certainly, there’s onus on individuals, parents. They have a role to play in terms of providing a good nutrition environment for their kids. But when you’re up against a multibillion-dollar multinational food and beverage industry that has billions of dollars of marketing dollars at their disposal, it’s not an even playing field. So we have to help parents to make the healthy choice.

Kevin Pho: So give us an example of some of the marketing tactics that food companies would use to push unhealthy foods on kids. What will be some examples of that?

Manuel Arango: Well, the obvious ones are, for example, the traditional one has been the cartoons and the infomercials on kids’ TV shows, such as Nickelodeon and others. So that’s been the number one over the years: TV. But it’s transformed well beyond TV.

So now, even on social media, they have influencers to reach children on social media. They will see it in and around schools and billboards. In convenience stores, there are all kinds of signs. In the grocery stores as well, sometimes the cereals, sugary cereals, will be at eye level, and the unhealthy food, lots of it at checkout as well, just to attract kids. And then even in games, like some video games and advergames as well that are created by the industry to lure kids, those messages are presented in there.

So it’s a really complicated and complex environment, but it comes from all areas, and kids can’t escape it. So the only way to address this. The industry has wanted to do this on a voluntary basis. They’ve been trying to do that in the United States and in Canada, and we know it doesn’t work. It’s proven not to work, and that’s why we’re really pushing for government intervention in Canada.

Kevin Pho: So in terms of the role of parents, you give the impression that parents sometimes are overpowered by the billions of dollars of marketing that food companies push behind unhealthy foods. But are there any practical things that parents can do to shield and guide their kids to better food choices despite the onslaught of marketing? What can parents do?

Manuel Arango: Yeah. So in an ideal world, don’t take your kids to the grocery store, because they will pester you for the unhealthy food and beverages. But that’s not a practical approach. I think one thing possibly to do is limit screen time. So limit TV cartoons and social media and phone and screen tablet use. There’s a lot of advertising there. And instead, have kids playing in the playground or outside, so you get physical activity. That’s a double whammy. Plus, you avoid this unhealthy marketing.

So those are a few things that parents can do, but it’s not easy, especially when you take into consideration a single parent, three kids. It’s tough. It is very difficult, and that’s why you need to level this playing field and make it a little easier for the parents to make that healthy choice for their families.

Kevin Pho: So talk to us about some of the data that unhealthy food choices can have on kids. Obviously, intuitively, we can kind of guess what happens, but what’s the data that really supports that?

Manuel Arango: So there’s a lot of evidence to indicate. We know that 90 percent of the food that’s marketed to kids is unhealthy. It’s all ultra-processed foods high in sugar, sodium, saturated fat, and a host of other chemicals and additives, etc. So it’s not fruits and vegetables that are being marketed to kids. It’s very unhealthy food.

And what we know is that if kids get habituated to unhealthy foods early into life, that tracks into adulthood. And in adulthood, that’s when those ultra-processed foods really start to increase incidence of chronic disease, high blood pressure, overweight and obesity, heart disease and stroke, cancer, diabetes, and the list goes on.

So if you can nip this in the bud, and marketing is a big piece in order to do that, if you can address the marketing, change those habits earlier on, it won’t track into adulthood, and we have healthier kids. As well, the marketing can influence the one condition that can happen really early in life: overweight and obesity. So if you’re eating ultra-processed foods, these energy-dense foods with low nutritional value, that can immediately impact overweight and obesity among kids.

Kevin Pho: So I want to talk about some of your policy suggestions and government intervention recommendations just in a little bit. But before that, historically, has there been anything short of government intervention that has really worked in swaying kids away from unhealthy food marketing?

Manuel Arango: So you’re saying not government intervention, right?

Kevin Pho: Yeah.

Manuel Arango: So, I mean, there’s some innovative things that have happened. I have seen in the U.S., at one point, there was some marketing of baby carrots, for example. It was done in a very attractive and well-marketed way for kids that was appealing to kids. I mean, that’s interesting, and it’s good. But if it’s only a small portion of the marketing, and the large bulk of it, the billions of dollars, are going to the unhealthy food and beverage, it’s not a wash, right? It doesn’t work.

So we do applaud those efforts by the healthy food and beverage industry, fruit and vegetable producers, to do this type of thing. But unfortunately, it’s like swimming upstream against a very heavy current, and you really got to address this government environment in order to really, truly be successful and have significant change.

Kevin Pho: So what do you propose on a policy level? How would you like the government to intervene?

Manuel Arango: Well, first, I do want to say a bit of congratulations for the government in Canada, because they’ve developed a healthy eating strategy, and they’ve done some really good things. So first of all, they banned trans fats, like they have done in the U.S., which is very good. They have created a new food guide, which is world-class, that’s really focused on encouraging the consumption of whole, real food, discouraging the consumption of ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks. So that’s very good, a new food guide.

Another thing they did is pass regulations to ensure front-of-package nutritional labeling. So this will be a symbol that’ll go in the front of the pack that’ll indicate whether the product is high in sugar, sodium, or saturated fat. That’ll come into effect in January of 2026. The last thing they did recently is the implementation and funding for a national school food program. It’s not very comprehensive, but it’s a start, so it’s very good.

That last outstanding item of the Canadian government’s healthy eating strategy was a commitment to restrict the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to kids. So that commitment has been made since 2015 in two election platforms, in a federal budget, and in four commitment or mandate letters to the health minister. So seven times this has been committed to over nine years, and here we are, nine years later, still waiting for the first steps, for the introduction of draft regulations.

So it is not an easy task to fight the food and beverage industry with their billions of dollars that they can allocate to advocacy and hiring lobbyists. So it’s very complicated. But ideally, in an ideal world, a policy should be very comprehensive and address all of those marketing pillars that I mentioned before.

In reality, usually, Rome is not built in a day. So here in Canada, what the government had been proposing through their initial policy proposal was to restrict the marketing on TV and in digital spaces, so social media, internet, etc. So that’s a good first step, and that’s what many other countries have done that have waded into this area.

So we agree that’s a first good step, and you have to monitor this to ensure that there isn’t lack of compliance or that the money isn’t shifted to these other marketing areas, because we know that’s typically what happens. But we do support this approach because it’s a good start.

But the problem is we’re blocked right now. We’re blocked because of industry advocacy, and as well, partly because the current government is not doing well in the polls. So they’re a little skittish and nervous about implementing new initiatives. But the reality is, with nine years, the thing’s been committed seven times over nine years. We got to move now. And even if it’s a baby step, we’ve got to take that baby step, and the government has to have the political will to move forward.

Kevin Pho: So how do you envision, say, restricting the marketing of unhealthy foods on social media? What exactly would that look like? Would that be a ban? How is unhealthy food defined? How would you envision something like this being implemented?

Manuel Arango: Well, we do have a means of defining healthy and unhealthy foods. There’s a lot of different approaches to this. In Canada, for example, we have done this definition through our front-of-package nutritional labeling regulations, so we have criteria there.

So one, the industry would be obliged to follow these criteria. And for foods that are in the unhealthy category, they simply would not be permitted to advertise on social media, and there would have to be penalties and fines for those companies that break this.

And as well, likely what we would rely on, because this happens in many countries, you have to rely on public complaints, complaints from the public, which then the government could follow up and take the appropriate enforcement measures. But mostly, what we do find is most industries and industry players will comply because they don’t want to look bad with the public. If government action is taken against them, and they’re fined, etc., and they end up in the newspaper, that’s not the kind of publicity they want. So yeah, there would have to be enforcement.

Kevin Pho: We have Manuel Arango. He’s the director of health policy and advocacy at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Today’s KevinMD article is “Why my 5-year-old is helping with my PhD thesis.” Manuel, we’ll end with some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Manuel Arango: Yeah. I think one thing, for sure, is we have to really understand and digest the fact that industry self-regulation does not work. This is the one thing industry always comes out with, and we have all kinds of evidence, not just in the nutrition and food space, that these don’t work, but in other areas as well.

And so we need government intervention. There is a role for government to play in this area, and it’s worked in other places. In the province of Quebec and Canada, they’ve had a ban on all commercial marketing. There’s been some good success that’s come out of that, and in Chile as well, there’s good evidence that government-led marketing restriction policies do work.

So it’s really key for the government to act because industry, they’re focused on profit, right? And so we can’t just simply allow industry to voluntarily come up with some self-regulations that suit them. Only governments can truly implement these very effective restrictions.

So we need to even the playing field and give parents a chance. And we really need to encourage governments to get that political will and move forward and implement restrictions, because they’ve worked in other places. Very key.

And then the last thing I would mention as well is that for others working in this area, whether it’s physicians or others in public health advocacy, perseverance is the key. This kind of thing, when you have this kind of industry opposition, this is not going to get done in a year in a country, right? It requires an ongoing effort with great perseverance, and there’s always going to be ups and downs and setbacks.

And sometimes, when the political environment is not favorable, you have to be knowledgeable enough to take a pause, but then be prepared to come back when the opportunity is there. So I would say the other big thing is perseverance. It’s not done overnight, and you got to be in for the long haul for something like this.

Kevin Pho: Manuel, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight, and thanks again for coming on the show.

Manuel Arango: Appreciate speaking to you. Thank you very much.

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