Food and beverage marketing is everywhere—most of it promotes unhealthy products and much targets children through tactics like cartoons and celebrity endorsements. Some marketing is apparent, like product packaging or official branded TV ads, while other forms are hidden, like sponsorships of events and video games.

Exposure to this marketing shapes food choices and perceptions of what’s healthy, contributing to poorer diets and higher risk of diet-related chronic diseases. This is especially true for children who may not realize they are being advertised to or understand the consequences of unhealthy eating.

Comprehensively restricting unhealthy food and beverage advertising and sponsorships across channels and platforms is a powerful tool to protect consumers from persuasive and deceitful tactics, helping people eat better, feel better and reduce their disease risk.

Effective unhealthy food and beverage marketing restrictions:

• Are mandatory and not replaced by self-regulation
• Are underpinned by an evidence-based nutrient profile model
• Are developed free from conflict of interest
• Apply to the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of food and beverages high in nutrients or ingredients of concern (e.g., saturated fat, salt, sugar, nonsugar sweetener) that are often ultra-processed
• Extend protections against harmful marketing practices to the entire population, not just children
  • Age-based restrictions alone are insufficient to protect children from marketing: children’s and adults’ media spaces are not clearly separated, industry can migrate to unregulated channels and enforcement is hampered by the lack of clear criteria for determining whether an ad is child-directed
• Ban marketing of these products to which children may be exposed across all types of platforms at all times
• Extend to cover all marketing practices
• Include protections aligned with the WHO International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes
• Establish independent regulatory bodies without conflicts of interest to monitor and hold noncompliant bodies accountable, including with penalties such as fines

• 60 countries restrict children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing
• 20 countries have mandatory policies
• 18 countries have mandatory policies limited to schools
• Few have comprehensive policies limiting both exposure and persuasive power across multiple settings (e.g., Chile, Mexico, Portugal)

Ready to join them by creating or strengthening an existing policy? Read the guide to restricting marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, with links to practical tools and resources.

Learn from the experiences of countries that have successfully implemented policies to protect people from unhealthy food and beverage marketing.