Television advertising of food during children's programming in Nepal

The World Health Organization has recommended that advertising of unhealthy food to children decrease in quantity (exposure) and efficacy (power). The degree to which marketing practices align with these recommendations varies across countries. The purpose of this study is to describe the television food marketing landscape that children experience in the South Asian country of Nepal.

Commercials from 57hours of television were recorded from three channels during hours that children's programming was played. In a content analysis of 1,203 food commercials, researchers coded commercials for nutrition content, product category and marketing appeal type.

Principal findings of this study were that nearly 21% of airtime during children's programming was dedicated to commercials, and 55% of that was dedicated to foods. Over 70% of food commercials aired advertised foods with excessive amounts of saturated fat, sugar, and/or sodium; nearly half of the commercials (47.7%) featured products that contained excess sugar. The most prevalent food types shown were ice cream and popsicles (20.7%), energy/nutritional supplements (20.6%), and candy (14.7%). Additionally, the three most commonly occurring marketing appeals featured highly-efficacious strategies for persuading children-animated effects (83.2%), movie, cartoon, animated, or costumed characters (36.8%), and television/movie tie-ins (16.5%).

Results from this study suggest that many television commercials shown in Nepal do not meet WHO recommendations for advertising foods to children. This is likely to negatively impact the diet and health of the next generation of Nepalis.