Food marketing is any type of commercial communication message that aims to increase recall, liking and/or consumption of particular food products or brands. It often taps into our innate preferences for sweet and salty foods. Even as infants, we stick out our tongues to get sweet and salty foods and reject sour and bitter-tasting foods. These preferences help us avoid potentially toxic foods.
This was adaptive for our ancestors, who lived in an unpredictable food environment and needed energy-dense foods to survive. However, our modern-day food environment is very different. In the developed world, there is pervasive marketing of unhealthy food (see Box 1). Such food is typically cheap, palatable and easy to access – often at the click of a button. This environment can encourage high-energy intake and low physical activity, which may in turn lead to energy imbalance, and weight-gain in the long term. This reflects poor appetite regulation (see Box 2).
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