Grant: CIHR Fellowship

The prevalence of obesity and related chronic diseases among Canadian youth has risen significantly over the past several decades, in part because of poor dietary patterns. While many factors influence diet, food and beverage advertising is thought to be important because of its significant association with the food preferences and choices of youth. These associations are not surprising given that many youth lack the necessary cognitive abilities to understand and/or resist the persuasive intent of advertising. To date, minimal research has explored whether associations between food advertising and dietary outcomes extend to settings outside the home, and none have looked at these relations within the context of Canadian schools where youth spend much of their day. Without this information, employing a multi-sectoral approach to reduce the negative impact of advertising on youth is unlikely. The purpose of this proposal is two-fold. First, all in-school food advertising will be documented and described within a sample of Vancouver schools. Second, connections between school-level food advertising and student-level dietary outcomes will be examined. These objectives will be met by developing and piloting a measurement tool and coding protocol to capture all in-school food advertising and by using multilevel statistical methods to analyze existing data from the CIHR-funded Food Practices on School Days Study, a cross-sectional study (n~1,000) that builds on a larger 5-year SSHRC Community University Research Alliance program that was funded to initiate a variety of food system and curricular initiatives in Vancouver Schools (K-12). Research findings will: provide insight into the prevalence of food and beverage advertising within Vancouver schools; help to determine associations between food and beverage advertising and the dietary outcomes of youth; and guide future school-based interventions and/or policy decisions for improving dietary outcomes among youth.