A social marketing perspective on public health nutrition and food policy

Since decades, public authorities sought to fight obesity and chronic food-related diseases. These attempts included economic measures, such as fat tax or more affordable fruit and vegetables, legal measures, such as forbidding energy dense foods at schools and informational campaigns targeted to a broad audience or high-risk populations. The accessibility to non-biased nutrition information (i.e., independent of commercial purposes) has become a crucial issue. Namely, the responsibility of fat and sweet products advertising on TV has been questioned by numerous research programs. These results led a lot of countries to limit TV advertising, especially to young audience. In 2007, France adopted a unique model, by mixing both legal rules restricting food advertising and incitement for firms to increase the nutritional quality of their food products. The aims of these measures were to improve both consumers' attitudes and food choices. Unfortunately, obesity is still growing and studies show that although the awareness of "5 a day" claims is high, there is no change in most food behaviors. We intend to assess this topic from a social marketing point of view. The purpose of social marketing is to improve people's well-being. It recommends setting up more efficient public programs by using marketing strategies and techniques rather than pursuing a mere objective of information. In peculiar, we intend to study the impact of previous campaigns not only in France but at an international level, to draw conclusions and bring improvements which could get better and more targeted results