Response to: Counter-advertising to combat unhealthy food marketing will not be enough. Commentary on 'Can counter-advertising reduce pre-adolescent children's susceptibility to front-of-package promotions on unhealthy foods? Experimental research'

摘要

Roberto's commentary on our paper (Dixon et al., 2014a) in this issue of Social Science and Medicine provides helpful contextual information concerning the plethora of marketing for unhealthy foods to which children are exposed. The commentary discusses potential strategies to address concerns about child-targeted food marketing, including industry self-regulation, policies mandating reductions in child-targeted marketing, and finally counter-advertising strategies to help children defend against food marketing. Our study was concerned with exploring the usefulness of the latter approach, and the results showed that counter-ads provided most children with some defence against front-of-package promotions (FOPPs) (nutrient content claims and sports celebrity endorsements) on unhealthy foods.