Thank you very much, and thank you to the committee for inviting me to speak to you today.
I've been doing research for the past 10 years on food and beverage marketing in Canada. Today I'm going to speak to you about the failure of self-regulation in food and beverage marketing to kids. I'm also going to talk to you about the size of the problem and how much food and beverage marketing kids are seeing on television, in digital media, on websites, and on social media apps and things like that.
The children's food and beverage advertising initiative was developed in 2007 by 16 food and beverage companies. Half of those companies pledged to not advertise to children whatsoever, and the other half pledged to only advertise healthy dietary choices to children.
There are many shortcomings to this piece of self-regulation. First of all, it doesn't include many forms of marketing. Packaging is not included, for instance. Many forms of advertising in schools are not included. Sponsorship is not included. Settings where children gather, such as recreation centres, are not included as part of the pledges.
Another point is that there are only 17 companies that participate in self-regulation. Based on research I have done, there are at least another 35 companies that market quite heavily to children in Canada.
The next thing is that viewership thresholds are set far too high by food and beverage companies. That's the percentage of children who have to be viewing a specific medium before the pledges kick in. Industry has set those levels at 25%, and most of the companies have set them at 35%. Only about 5% to 6% of television programs even hit that threshold, so it's a very small number of programs to which the pledges even apply. If we're looking online at websites, there are maybe two dozen websites that would hit that 35% threshold, so there are very few, because there are so many different sites kids can go to.
There are no limitations in self-regulation about the use of spokescharacters. Those are the characters that are created by companies, such as Tony the Tiger. There are no restrictions on the frequency of marketing, so the same ad can be shown over and over again. Also, that healthier food definition that was established by industry is not considered very stringent by dieticians.
I did some research comparing what happened with children's exposure to food and beverage marketing in 2006 and in 2009. Before 2006 was before the children's food and beverage advertising initiative was implemented; 2009 was after. What we found is that children's exposure to food and beverage marketing actually increased after self-regulation was implemented. It increased by almost 17%. On the slide you can see two of the columns that have increased the most, children's exposure to fast food advertising and children's exposure to snack advertising. This is data taken from television.
I also did some research looking at the power of advertising. Advertising's impact is a function of two different things: exposure and the power of the ad. The power is all the marketing techniques that are used by the advertiser to try to hook the child and really appeal to them. When we compared advertising in May 2006 and May 2011, after the children's food and beverage advertising initiative was implemented, what we found was that the power of the ads actually increased: child and teen targeting went up by 92%, spokescharacter use increased by 27%, and licensed character use went up by 151%. “Licensed character use” refers to the use by advertisers of characters like Dora the Explorer to sell their products.
In 2015 industry came up with common nutrition criteria because they were so heavily criticized for having very poor nutritional criteria. We did a study comparing the healthfulness of the products being advertised in 2013, before these nutritional criteria came into effect, and then afterwards, in 2016. Would we see a difference in the healthfulness of the ads that kids were watching?
What we found was no difference whatsoever. If you look at the far right-hand column, you will see that in 2013, 99.2% of the ads were classified as either “high” or “excessive” in total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, or free sugar. In 2016, it was 100%. There is no statistically significant difference, and we actually saw increases in the percentage of ads for products that were classified as “excessive” in trans fat and sodium.
As to the size of the problem, I just participated in a research study undertaken in Australia. A data collection took place in 20 different countries across the world. I'm showing on the slide the data from the developed countries that participated. Canada had the highest rate of food and beverage advertising to children of all of the countries. We had 10.9 food ads per station on children's specialty channels. Those are channels that target children. When we looked at the ratio of healthy ads to non-healthy ads, for every healthy ad that was shown on TV during children's viewing, there were 12 unhealthy ads. Nancy was completely right when she said there's not a lot of broccoli being advertised.
The food categories we see advertised most frequently on television are restaurants. Fast-food restaurants are the most heavily advertised category.
The second category is candy and chocolate bars, followed by cakes, cookies, and ice cream. You don't even have to do a nutritional analysis to figure out that these are not healthy foods being advertised.
Turning to digital marketing, I finished a study last year in which we looked at the 10 most popular websites that children are going to in Canada. We were looking at the number of banner and pop-up ads that kids see on their favourite websites. These were ads that kids would see on desktop and laptop computers.
What we found was 54 million food and beverage ads on those 10 websites alone. We couldn't get over the number. The most frequently advertised food categories were as follows: fast-food restaurants again; cakes, cookies, and ice cream; cold cereal; and snacks. The product that was advertised most frequently on the websites was Pop-Tarts. The second one was Frosted Flakes. Third was the McDonald's Happy Meal. The fourth one surprised us quite a bit: the fourth most advertised product was Red Bull. We were quite surprised by this. There's actually a Health Canada regulation saying that you cannot advertise Red Bull, which is a very dangerous product for children under the age of 12. The fifth most advertised product was Kraft Lunchables.
When we did a nutritional analysis of the products advertised on those 10 most popular sites, 93% were classified as excessive in either sugar, fat, or sodium. As you see in the next column on the left-hand side of the slide, 77.4% of the products were classified as excessive in sugar.
I just completed a study one month ago that looks at marketing to kids through social media sites. We went into the community and recruited more than 100 kids between the ages of seven and 16 years. We put eye-tracking glasses on them and had kids go to their favourite social media sites. They could go to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, or YouTube—and by the way, the images showing on the slide are all taken directly from my research. These are images that kids saw in the study.
We found that 72% of the kids in the study were exposed to food and beverage marketing while they were on social media sites. There were actually 215 instances of food marketing, which is about two food and beverage ads per 10-minute period. Because we also asked the kids how much time they were spending on social media sites, we were able to estimate that kids are seeing approximately 113 food and beverage ads per week on social media sites alone. That worked out to almost 6,000 food and beverage ads per year that kids are seeing on social media sites, and as I said, it's not just teenagers who are going to social media sites: we had kids as young as seven who had social media sites on their phones. The kids in the study were using their own phones or tablets.
It was fast food ads that appeared most often on social media sites, with 44% of the products being for fast foods. The second most popular category was sugar-sweetened beverages, shown on the orange bar at the bottom of the slide, followed by candy and chocolates, followed by snacks.
Five per cent of the ads seen on the social media sites were for alcohol, and these were viewed by the children in our study.
When we did an analysis of the healthfulness of the products, 97% of the products were classified as excessive in sugar, fat, or sodium.
In conclusion, we know that self-regulation is not working. We have lots of research to show that. A law that restricts food marketing to children is essential, and I applaud the committee and Nancy for bringing a bill forward on this topic.
We need a broad definition of marketing to children that includes all media and child settings. We need a very stringent and evidence-based definition of what is considered healthy. The other thing is that audience thresholds for the percentage of kids who have to be viewing a medium have to be set low enough so they capture enough media and child settings.
Finally, it's very important to have independent and well-resourced monitoring.
I look forward to answering your questions once all the presentations are done.
Thank you very much.