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Session: Leveraging Technology Applications for Nutrition Research (Oral 7)

(OR07-01-23) Could Google’s Mysterious Nutrient Profile Model Help Curb the Extensive Advertising of Unhealthy Foods to US Children and Adolescents?

Sunday, July 23, 2023
10:00 AM – 10:12 AM ET
Location:  Constitution B

    Presenting Author(s)

  • Elizabeth Dunford, PhD (she/her/hers)

    Project Consultant, Food Policy
    The George Institute for Global Health
    Raleigh, North Carolina, United States

    Disclosure(s): No relevant financial relationship(s) with ineligible companies to disclose.

    • Co-Author(s)

  • AJ

    Alexandra Jones

    The George Institute for Global Health

  • BK

    Bridget Kelly

    University of Wollongong

Disclosure(s):
Elizabeth Dunford, PhD: No relevant financial relationship(s) with ineligible companies to disclose.
Objectives: The US has the largest online advertising market in the world, and Google has been the market leader in online advertising for well over a decade. In October 2020, Google Ads updated their ‘Other restricted businesses policy’ restricting High Fat Sugar Salt (HFSS) Food and/or Non-Alcoholic Beverages advertising for minors in the United Kingdom and European Union. The policy includes Google’s own HFSS Food and Beverage Nutrient Profile Model (Google NPM) which provides nutritional criteria that a food or beverage must meet to be advertised to children through the Google Display Network. The objective of this study was to evaluate the proportion of US packaged food and beverages sold by the top 25 US manufacturers that would be allowed to be advertised to children under the Google NPM.

Methods: The top 25 US food and beverage manufacturers based on sales data from Euromonitor International were identified. Nutrient data for all products from these manufacturers were sourced from Label Insight’s Open Data Initiative. Each product was assigned to a Google NPM category. The proportion of products eligible under the Google NPM were determined overall, by company and by category. As secondary analysis, products eligible under the industry’s CFBAI criteria were compared to the Google NPM.

Results: Under Google’s NPM, 18% of 14,188 products examined were eligible for advertising to children, with eligible “healthier” products representing only $44 billion in revenue for the top 25 US food and beverage manufacturers out of the more than $240 billion in revenue generated annually. Overall less than half of the products currently allowed to be advertised to children under the CFBAI were eligible under the Google NPM.

Conclusions: In recent years, there has been a substantial shift in children’s media practices, from predominantly television-based to online. In lieu of government regulation, the Google NPM may offer a solution if applied in the US online marketplace, and may help curb the advertising of unhealthy foods to children and adolescents. Any potential for improvement, even if small, in reducing children’s exposure to advertising of unhealthy foods, should not be ignored.

Funding Sources: None