Leia Minaker, University of Waterloo – Kids, Stores and Junk Food Promotions

Stores and restaurants are targeting children with ads for unhealthy foods.

Leia Minaker, associate professor in the school of planning at the University of Waterloo, says know what to look for when shopping with your children.

Dr. Leia Minaker is an Associate Professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, Canada.  Her research areas include the food environment, planning and health equity, health and the built environment, nutrition and youth health.

Kids, Stores and Junk Food Promotions

Marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to kids is ubiquitous in point-of-sale locations, like grocery stores, restaurants and corner stores, according to our research, undertaken with colleagues from our university.

We compiled data from over 2000 restaurants and 800 stores that sell food, and detail how food and beverage companies employ dozens of tactics to market their products directly to children. 

While we expected to see marketing to kids in stores, we were surprised by the breadth of techniques employed by food and beverage marketers.

Our research shows that the use of child themes and designs was the most common marketing technique, followed by the use of branded characters.

We see marketers using bright colours, images and other design elements commonly associated with children, which appeared on a third of beverage fridges and two thirds of ice cream fridges.

Children are exposed to a substantial amount of advertising for unhealthy foods and beverages before they even enter a store. Half of the ads outside of stores and 41 per cent outside restaurants used at least one child-directed marketing technique.

The bombardment continues within stores with displays in the middle of aisles featuring child themes and branded characters. We found on average nine of these displays per store.

Checkouts are also considered a prime location for marketing to kids because items are displayed at children’s eye level and within their reach. This placement encourages ‘pester power’— when a child nags or pesters their parents to make an impulse purchase.

The prevalence of marketing to kids is troubling because it works, leading to increased consumption of unhealthy foods and sugary drinks. Children aged 9-13 are getting most of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, high in salt, sugars and saturated fat.

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