Are Food Advertisements Promoting More Unhealthy Foods and Beverages over Time? Evidence from Three Swedish Food Magazines, 1995–2014

ABSTRACT

Unhealthy food in advertising has been suggested as a mediator for the increase in diet-related illness. This study quantitatively investigates changes in food advertising between 1995 and 2014 in terms of food categories promoted, macronutrient content, and percentage of foods classified as heathy or unhealthy from a sample of 7,199 ads from three Swedish food magazines. With the exception of increased alcoholic beverage and decreased carbohydrate-rich-food promotion, no monotonic trends of increasingly unhealthy food advertisement are found. From these findings, it is argued that food magazine advertising is not a mediator of the adverse dietary trend.

KEYWORDS:

• Food advertising
• media
• nutrition
• obesity
• Sweden
• time trend

Acknowledgments

Anna Bryntorp (Kristianstad University, Sweden) and Håkan Andersson (Linneus University, Sweden) are gratefully acknowledged for valuable discussions and suggestions on using food magazines for studying diet trends.