Research reportNutrient profiling and the regulation of marketing to children. Possibilities and pitfalls
Highlights
• Nutrient profiling is the classifying or ranking of foods according to their nutritional composition. • Nutrient profiling has many applications including the regulating of food marketing. • Better methods for validating and comparing nutrient profile models are needed.
Introduction
There are several definitions of ‘nutrient profiling’. The definition that seems likely to gain most currency can be found in a forthcoming publication of the World Health Organization (WHO) entitled Guiding Principles and Framework Manual for the development or adaptation of nutrient profile models (First Edition) (WHO, in press). The definition that this WHO ‘manual’ gives for nutrient profiling is: ‘The science of classifying or ranking foods according to their nutritional composition for reasons related to preventing disease and promoting health’.
This definition has been criticised on at least two grounds. Firstly it has been disputed whether nutrient profiling is a ‘science’ on the basis that it involves a degree of subjectivity. This objection has some validity but nutrient profiling is also developing greater objectivity as evidenced by the increasing number of scientific papers and reviews on the subject. See in particular three recent special editions of scientific journals of the: European Journal of Nutrition (2007) (46(S2)); Journal of the American College of Nutrition (2009) (28(4)) and American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2010) (91(4)). Secondly it is clear that nutrient profiling models often use characteristics of foods other than merely their nutritional composition to classify or rank foods, e.g. their energy content, their contribution to the diet (e.g. whether the food is a snack or a main dish), etc. However this WHO definition, for all its faults is probably the best one available.
For the purpose of this paper the marketing of food is considered to encompass four methods: manipulating the composition of the ‘product’ itself, ‘promotion’, i.e. the advertising of food; increasing its availability (the number of ‘places’ from which it might be obtained); and the manipulation of its ‘price’ i.e. the ‘4 Ps’ of marketing theory (McCarthy, 1960). Nutrient profiling models are used or have been proposed for the regulation of all ‘4 Ps’ of the marketing of foods to children (see below). We have no particular definition of children for this paper.
Regulation – for the purpose of this paper – can be compulsory or voluntary. Nutrient profiling models for compulsory regulation may need to be different for those used for the voluntary regulation of marketing of food to children (again see below).
Section snippets
Purposes of nutrient profiling
The main general purpose of nutrient profiling is to generate definitions for terms that can be applied to foods. These terms include descriptions such as ‘low fat’ or ‘high fibre’, ‘energy dense, nutrient poor’, ‘healthier’ or ‘less healthy’, ‘healthful’, ‘healthy’, etc. Nutrient profiling can also be used to generate a numerical score for a food e.g. where 1 is the score for the least healthy food and 100 is the score for the healthiest food (for all foods or a specified type of food).
The development of nutrient profile models
Methods for the development of nutrient profile models from scratch have been described elsewhere (Scarborough, Rayner, & Stockley, 2007). This development invariably involves a series of decisions made either explicitly or implicitly by the model developers. The options available and the implications of the various options are detailed elsewhere (Sacks et al., 2011, Scarborough et al., 2007, WHO, in press). Briefly the decisions are as follows.
Validation of nutrient profile models
Testing for the validity of nutrient profile models is directly comparable to testing for the validity of other instruments designed for classificatory purposes ranging from biochemical tests for the carbohydrate content of foods to questionnaires designed to measure the health status of individuals. Validity refers to the degree to which an instrument accurately reflects or assesses the specific concept that the researcher is attempting to measure (whist reliability is concerned with the
Comparisons between nutrient profile models
There are now hundreds of published nutrient profile models some of which are detailed in a catalogue which, it is hoped, will shortly be published by the WHO. This catalogue currently contains 63 publicly available models but many more models were excluded from the catalogue (e.g. because details of the algorithm were not readily available.) This catalogue is an update of a previous review of existing models published in 2008 which found only 39 models (Stockley, Rayner, & Kaur, 2008).
The
Conclusions
The regulation of marketing of foods to children for health reasons (and whether the restrictions are compulsory or voluntary) requires the use of a nutrient profile model unless the marketing of all foods is to be forbidden. There are now a large number of nutrient profile models that are used for, or designed for the purposes of, regulating the marketing of food to children and there are other models, designed for other applications that may be suitable. The development of some of these
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