Abstract
Food marketing is currently a multi-billion dollar industry. High levels of child-targeted food marketing, including on food packaging, suggests the need for media literacy skills to navigate persuasive techniques on food products. Evidence-based educational content on the topic of Media Literacy & Food Marketing (MLFM) was developed for children in Grades 3 to 9. This MLFM content has been taught to thousands of Canadian children across Canada, both in-person and virtually. This Practice Note highlights key strategies and lessons from implementing the program, and provides valuable insights into effective methods for empowering children’s critical thinking around food promotion.
Assessment of Need
Food marketing is currently a multi-billion dollar industry, which includes high levels of targeted advertising to children (World Health Organization [WHO], 2016). The average Canadian child sees 8 to 10 food and beverage advertisements a day on television, and a stunning number of food advertisements online (Heart & Stroke Foundation, 2017). Food packaging is a powerful form of food marketing, yet many children lack the skills to navigate the myriad advertising techniques (including cartoon characters, color, nutrition claims, and incentives) that promote packaged foods of varying nutritional qualities (Elliott, 2019). Given children’s substantial exposure to food marketing, media literacy skills are required. Health-promoting media literacy education encourages the development and use of the analytical skills necessary to evaluate food marketing messages to make healthy choices (Truman & Elliott, 2020). This is something not currently covered in the school curriculum in Canada, even though children’s worlds are filled with packaged food products.
Description of Programming
Lesson plans and interactive toolkits were developed (for Grades 3–9) on the topic of Media Literacy and Food Marketing (MLFM), to address gaps in children’s knowledge when it comes to evaluating packaged foods (including the healthfulness of those foods). The programming seeks to expand children’s critical capabilities when it comes to packaging, labeling, and nutrition (see https://www.ucalgary.ca/food-marketing/knowledge-translation). Specifically, MLFM lessons enhance children’s ability to interpret food marketing messages, such as understanding how color, spokes-characters, brand names, and health symbols work to make products appealing. Core media literacy components—defined as the ability to access, analyze, and evaluate messages across a variety of contexts (Livingstone, 2003)—are central to these lessons. First developed in 2012 (and continually updated in light of new research), the evidence-based MLFM content has been extensively piloted, taught by teachers/facilitators in multiple provinces, and evaluated for effectiveness. In 2019, the MLFM programming became the focus of a dedicated knowledge translation (KT) project, in which trained facilitators taught the content in-person (September 2019–March 2020, pre-Covid restrictions) and online (September 2020–June 2021, during Covid). Over 5,200 Canadian children in classrooms, after-school programs, and summer camps went through the program during this time. This Practice Note highlights lessons learned from the expert facilitators who taught the MLFM content, both in-person and online.
Lessons Learned
The MLFM lesson plans and toolkits are evidence-based media literacy focused programming that intervene in more traditional nutrition literacy approaches (i.e., nutrient/ingredient focused) to evaluating food in packaging. As such, key lessons learned when it comes to the content underline the importance of maintaining focus on the marketing “power”—that is, the persuasive techniques that attract attention, make the food package appealing, and influence the perceived healthfulness of that food.
Lesson One: Keep Focus on the Front-of-Package Persuasive Techniques
Key to media literacy and food packaging is to get children to think about the persuasive appeals on food packaging, and how those appeals work. This requires drawing attention to the details around specific techniques, such as color, cartoon characters, and health symbols. In the actual teaching, however, children were initially more keen to tell facilitators what they knew about nutrition (e.g., “too much sugar is bad”) than to consider how persuasive appeals might influence them. Children also wanted to consume sample products used in the lessons (e.g., cereals, cookies), even though they represented sugary foods. Tellingly, the reasons children gave for wanting to eat these foods included packaging appeals, such as “the picture of the food looks good” or “I like the colours.” Pulling the children back to consider the front of the package matters because it encourages them to think about how marketing influences both their perceptions of the food and their desire to eat it. Although many of the children we taught had some basic nutrition knowledge, it did not make them immune to persuasive techniques.
Lesson Two: Redirect Inquiries About “Good” or “Bad” Foods
MLFM programming is not about telling children what is, or is not, healthy. It is about making children aware of persuasive techniques and providing critical skills to consider how those techniques influence their food attitudes. This is why it is important to redirect questions such as “is this healthy?” back to the children by suggesting, “You tell me!,” and encouraging them to use information on the package to make their own evaluation. This strategy is especially important with front-of-package health claims, which children often think they understand—but typically do not. Claims like “organic,” “fat free,” and “gluten-free,” for example, are commonly interpreted as signaling a healthy food. Discussing why such claims need to viewed in tandem with other information (especially the Nutrition Facts table) is important to empower children to make their own informed assessments.
Lesson Three: Allow Time to Apply the Knowledge Gained
Since MLFM programming emphasizes critical skill acquisition, promoted through both analysis and evaluation activities, children need time to apply what they know. In practical terms, this means allowing children to process questions before they answer (especially in the virtual environment where is it easy to jump in with answers too soon), as well as providing real packages for children to consider, and time for discussion. When teaching is done online, children can be asked to go find a packaged food from their kitchens for analysis and discussion. Equally important are breaks between activities (especially movement breaks for younger children). Breaks and activities provide important time for children to reflect upon and apply the lessons they have just learned.
Implications for Practice
While this Practice Note focuses specifically on a MLFM intervention, the lessons learned here can be applied more broadly to food/nutrition programming interested in providing critical thinking skills around health messaging. This includes not only K-12 settings, but also after-school programs and summer camps interested in promoting critical media literacy skills around food. The MLFM program, with its focus on critical thinking, provides highly complementary content for clubs and camps on physical activity, health science, and/or food literacy. The MLFM programming highlights the importance of effective methods for empowering children to navigate a complex food environment filled with marketing messages.
