Rebalancing the marketing of healthier versus less healthy food products
Authors: Jean Adams
Journal: PLoS Medicine (2022)

We live in a world increasingly saturated with marketing for less healthy foods [1].One study found that children in New Zealand see an average of 27 instances of marketing for less healthy foods and only 12 for healthier foods, each day [2].Food marketing involves activities across the 4 Ps of the marketing mix: product, place, price, and promotion.We are encouraged to buy less healthy food products through their placement in prominent store locations such as checkouts, end of aisles, and store entrances; price discounts; and promotions including advertising, cartoon tie-ins, and celebrity endorsements.Systematic reviews have confirmed the effectiveness of these marketing techniques to influence purchasing and consumption of less healthy foods [3][4][5].Indeed, the documented power of food marketing has led the World Health Organisation to recommended limiting exposure as an overarching and enabling "best buy" to improve diets [6].Supermarkets remain the location of about 70% of food spend in the United Kingdom [7].The concentration of food marketing in grocery stores can feel particularly overwhelming with parents describing the "temptation" as "like a trip to the zoo every week" for their children [8].As such, supermarkets may be particularly important venues for addressing food marketing.In 2 accompanying Research Articles in PLOS Medicine, Piernas and colleagues used nonrandomised approaches to study the impacts on sales of a range of strategies to rebalance the marketing of healthier versus less healthy products in 3 large UK supermarket chains [9,10].Across the 2 papers, 7 different interventions were implemented that changed the relative availability of healthier versus less healthy products (2 interventions), removed less healthy products from prominent positions, placed healthier products at eye level, offered price discounts on healthier products, increased signage on healthier products, and applied a range of entertainment tie-in promotions on healthier products (one intervention each).These variously had the intention to encourage substitution of less healthy products with healthier alternatives or to reduce purchasing of less healthy foods without substitution.Increasing the relative availability of healthier products, removing less healthy products from prominent positions and price promotions on healthier products were all associated with changes in unit sales in the expected direction, although associations with changes in nutrients purchased were sometimes more modest.In contrast, moving healthier products to eye level and increasing signage were not associated with changes in sales.These findings are particularly timely in England where a range of measures to reduce exposure to marketing of less healthy foods in retail environments are due to be implemented from October 2022 [11].Piernas and colleagues worked in collaboration with large UK supermarket chains.That the chains were prepared to innovate to support public health indicates that rebalancing marketing towards healthier products may not be as burdensome to the sector as it has sometimes claimed [12].It also strengthens the external validity of these studies giving an indication of how customers react in real-world environments.