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A team of faculty, students, and staff from the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute published a review of the impact of unhealthy food marketing on adolescents and young adults in the most recent issue of Obesity Reviews.
Based on a review of 108 studies and 19 literature reviews on the topic, the authors, led by Rositsa Ilieva, director of policy for the Food Policy Institute, concluded that strong evidence across studies and countries showed that the exposure of young people to multiple messages promoting consumption of unhealthy food across several media, almost all for unhealthy products, contributed to unhealthy consumption and diet-related health problems.
The authors noted that the synergistic and cumulative impact of exposure to multiple media, less studied in the literature than any single medium such as television or social media, required more research to inform policy and prevention.
“Unhealthy food is a leading global cause of preventable illnesses and premature deaths,” says Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor of Public Health at CUNY SPH and a co-author of the review. “Our review shows that stronger regulation of the misleading and ubiquitous marketing of these products targeting young people is urgently needed.”
Other co-authors included Nava Gottlieb and Hailey Christian, students at The London School of Economics and Political Science, and Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, respectively, who completed field placements at the Food Policy Institute.
