Brief report
Food Marketing to Children Through Toys: Response of Restaurants to the First U.S. Toy Ordinance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2011.08.020Get rights and content

Background

On August 9, 2010, Santa Clara County CA became the first U.S. jurisdiction to implement an ordinance that prohibits the distribution of toys and other incentives to children in conjunction with meals, foods, or beverages that do not meet minimal nutritional criteria. Restaurants had many different options for complying with this ordinance, such as introducing more healthful menu options, reformulating current menu items, or changing marketing or toy distribution practices.

Purpose

To assess how ordinance-affected restaurants changed their child menus, marketing, and toy distribution practices relative to non-affected restaurants.

Methods

Children's menu items and child-directed marketing and toy distribution practices were examined before and at two time points after ordinance implementation (from July through November 2010) at ordinance-affected fast-food restaurants compared with demographically matched unaffected same-chain restaurants using the Children's Menu Assessment tool.

Results

Affected restaurants showed a 2.8- to 3.4-fold improvement in Children's Menu Assessment scores from pre- to post-ordinance with minimal changes at unaffected restaurants. Response to the ordinance varied by restaurant. Improvements were seen in on-site nutritional guidance; promotion of healthy meals, beverages, and side items; and toy marketing and distribution activities.

Conclusions

The ordinance appears to have positively influenced marketing of healthful menu items and toys as well as toy distribution practices at ordinance-affected restaurants, but did not affect the number of healthful food items offered.

Section snippets

Background

Food marketing to children through toys and other incentives in restaurant chains is pervasive. The Federal Trade Commission1 estimated that, in 2006, ten restaurant chains spent $360 million to acquire toys to distribute with children's meals and sold more than 1.2 billion meals with toys to children aged <12 years. Research2, 3 shows that consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods—the type at fast-food restaurants paired with toys—contributes to obesity. A 2010 analysis4 of children's

Purpose

Restaurants had different options for complying with this ordinance, such as introducing more healthful menu options, reformulating current menu items, or changing marketing or toy distribution practices. The purpose of the current study was to assess if and how ordinance-affected restaurants changed their children's menus, marketing, and toy distribution practices relative to non-affected restaurants. To achieve this, children's menus and child-directed marketing and toy distribution practices

Methods

The ordinance affected only restaurants located in the unincorporated regions of Santa Clara County CA as identified by the County Public Health Department.5, 6 In order to include socioeconomically and demographically matched unaffected control restaurants, the sample was narrowed to national fast-food chain restaurants. Unincorporated sections of the County are geographically small and thus only four individual restaurants qualified—one restaurant representing a national fast-food chain and

Results

Figure 1 shows comparable pre-ordinance CMA scores at affected and unaffected restaurants. Mean CMA scores at affected restaurants showed a 2.8- to 3.4-fold improvement from pre- to post-ordinance (immediate and 4-month post, respectively) with minimal changes at unaffected restaurants. Three of four ordinance-affected restaurants showed improvement from pre-ordinance to the first post-ordinance time point and one of these restaurants continued to improve its score after this.

Breakdown of the

Conclusion

The ordinance appears to have positively influenced affected restaurants to promote healthy meal items and to discontinue distribution of toys with unhealthy food items. Restaurants did not increase the number of healthful food options available, reformulate menu items, or offer toys freely in response to the ordinance over the time frame of the preliminary evaluation. However, there was considerable variability in the response to the ordinance. Notably, one global fast-food chain restaurant

References (11)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

View full text