Kelly Garton

And several of these strategies were transferred over to ultra processed food and drink companies.

Yeah, so the marketing strategies are interesting.

And again, targeting children is a strategic decision because product preferences and brand recognition form at a young age.

So companies are competing to bring in kids early and create consumers for life.

So just like the earlier days of cigarettes, before this became more regulated, marketing that targets children and young people typically hooks into the ideals of friendship and fun and being cool.

So depending on the target age, this might feature something like cartoons or movie characters that are popular with children, but also professional athletes and popular actors and musicians.

So these are many of the same strategies that we saw the tobacco industry using, you know, back in the 90s before policy really caught up to the issue and decided to put a stop to it.

The difficult thing with ultra-processed food is that it can be hard to define the

in regulation, because, you know, laws have to be really specific, very detailed in how, you know, which products would be included, and which would not be included.

And the definitions that exist in regulation are still very ingredients based.

And so we know that there are several countries who have started by restricting the marketing of foods high in

salt, fat, and sugar, or high in energy to kids.

And that's a really good first step.

So countries like Chile that were really the first to do this, and that was followed by others in the UK and Norway that have these comprehensive regulations.

So there's evidence that designing regulation that way actually ends up covering most ultra processed foods, just due to the fact that they're often high in salt, fat, or sugar.

But other research has shown that if we even just added a definition of having some of these key sensory additives in those regulations, then we'd really be capturing like 95% of ultra processed food in those regulations.

So there's definitely countries around the world, jurisdictions that we could learn from in New Zealand about designing regulation to protect kids from this marketing problem.

Yeah, there's pretty much no rules and restrictions around what.

can be called natural flavors and colors on a package.

And at the end of the day, these are still put there to give an illusion of healthiness.