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An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications

BACKGROUND: Increased marketing of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods has been identified as a driver of the global obesity epidemic and a priority area for preventative efforts. Local and international research has focused on the unhealthiness of television advertising, with limited research into th...

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Autores principales: Sainsbury, Emma, Colagiuri, Stephen, Magnusson, Roger
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440940/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28532472
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4433-2
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author Sainsbury, Emma
Colagiuri, Stephen
Magnusson, Roger
author_facet Sainsbury, Emma
Colagiuri, Stephen
Magnusson, Roger
author_sort Sainsbury, Emma
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Increased marketing of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods has been identified as a driver of the global obesity epidemic and a priority area for preventative efforts. Local and international research has focused on the unhealthiness of television advertising, with limited research into the growing outdoor advertising industry. This study aimed to examine the extent of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network, and to assess the nutritional quality of advertised products against the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. METHODS: All 178 train stations on the Sydney metropolitan train network were surveyed in summer and winter. A survey tool was developed to collect information for all advertisements on and immediately surrounding the train station. Information included product, brand, location and advertisement format. Advertisements were coded by nutrition category, product subcategory and size. Chi-square, ANOVA and ANCOVA tests were conducted to test for differences in the amount of food and beverage advertising by season and area socioeconomic status (SES). RESULTS: Of 6931 advertisements identified, 1915 (27.6%) were promoting a food or beverage. The majority of food and beverage advertisements were for unhealthy products; 84.3% were classified as discretionary, 8.0% core and 7.6% miscellaneous. Snack foods and sugar-sweetened beverages were the most frequently advertised products, regardless of season. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo were the largest advertisers on the network, contributing 10.9% and 6.5% of total advertisements respectively. There was no difference in the mean number of food and beverage advertisements by area SES, but the proportion of advertising that was for discretionary foods was highest in low SES areas (41.9%, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that, irrespective of season, food and beverage advertisements across the Sydney metropolitan train network are overwhelmingly for unhealthy (discretionary) products. The results of this study highlight the inadequacy of Australia’s voluntary self-regulatory system in protecting members of the public from exposure to unhealthy food advertising. Regulatory action by government, such as placing a cap on the amount of unhealthy food advertisements, or requiring a proportion of all advertising to be for the promotion of healthy foods, is required to address this issue. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4433-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-54409402017-05-24 An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications Sainsbury, Emma Colagiuri, Stephen Magnusson, Roger BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Increased marketing of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods has been identified as a driver of the global obesity epidemic and a priority area for preventative efforts. Local and international research has focused on the unhealthiness of television advertising, with limited research into the growing outdoor advertising industry. This study aimed to examine the extent of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network, and to assess the nutritional quality of advertised products against the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. METHODS: All 178 train stations on the Sydney metropolitan train network were surveyed in summer and winter. A survey tool was developed to collect information for all advertisements on and immediately surrounding the train station. Information included product, brand, location and advertisement format. Advertisements were coded by nutrition category, product subcategory and size. Chi-square, ANOVA and ANCOVA tests were conducted to test for differences in the amount of food and beverage advertising by season and area socioeconomic status (SES). RESULTS: Of 6931 advertisements identified, 1915 (27.6%) were promoting a food or beverage. The majority of food and beverage advertisements were for unhealthy products; 84.3% were classified as discretionary, 8.0% core and 7.6% miscellaneous. Snack foods and sugar-sweetened beverages were the most frequently advertised products, regardless of season. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo were the largest advertisers on the network, contributing 10.9% and 6.5% of total advertisements respectively. There was no difference in the mean number of food and beverage advertisements by area SES, but the proportion of advertising that was for discretionary foods was highest in low SES areas (41.9%, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that, irrespective of season, food and beverage advertisements across the Sydney metropolitan train network are overwhelmingly for unhealthy (discretionary) products. The results of this study highlight the inadequacy of Australia’s voluntary self-regulatory system in protecting members of the public from exposure to unhealthy food advertising. Regulatory action by government, such as placing a cap on the amount of unhealthy food advertisements, or requiring a proportion of all advertising to be for the promotion of healthy foods, is required to address this issue. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4433-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-05-22 /pmc/articles/PMC5440940/ /pubmed/28532472 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4433-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sainsbury, Emma
Colagiuri, Stephen
Magnusson, Roger
An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications
title An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications
title_full An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications
title_fullStr An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications
title_full_unstemmed An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications
title_short An audit of food and beverage advertising on the Sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications
title_sort audit of food and beverage advertising on the sydney metropolitan train network: regulation and policy implications
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440940/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28532472
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4433-2
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