The Department of Nutrition and Food Safety at the World Health Organization is launching its new guideline on ‘Policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing’. The guideline provides countries with recommendations on measures to restrict food marketing to which children are exposed, including policy design elements to improve the measures’ effectiveness. 
Children and adolescents continue to be exposed to powerful food marketing in settings where they gather (e.g. schools, sports clubs), or through their favorite media, including television channels and digital spaces. Such marketing predominantly promotes less healthy food options, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, chocolate and confectionery, and uses a wide variety of marketing strategies that are likely to appeal to children, including celebrity/sports endorsements, promotional characters, product claims, gifts/incentives, tie-ins, competitions and games. Such marketing negatively shapes children’s food preferences, their food choice and dietary intake.
To address this challenge, and to support Member States in protecting children from the harmful impact of food marketing, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed this evidence-informed guideline. Join us at the virtual launch event, which will cover the evidence behind the guideline and a call to action by multiple stakeholders. Harmful food marketing to which children are exposed can and should be regulated.
The WHO guideline on Policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing will be available from 03 July 2023, 12:30 pm CEST.
For any queries please write to us at nfs@who.int.