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BTG Research Brief – Child-Directed Marketing Within and Around Fast-Food Restaurants | www.bridgingthegapresearch.org 1
Research Brief
December 2012
This brief provides an overview of
child-directed marketing within
and around fast-food restaurants
and examines how these marketing
practices vary by neighborhood
income and race and ethnicity.
Using validated instruments, trained
staff gathered data from 2,176
fast-food restaurants located in a
nationally representative sample
of public middle- and high-school
enrollment areas in 2010. For these
analyses, child-directed marketing
was dened as the presence of one
or more of the following: exterior
advertisements with cartoon
characters; exterior advertisements
with movie, television, or sports
gures; exterior advertisements
for kids’ meal toys; 3-D cartoon
characters on the exterior; exterior
play area; interior play area;
in-store displays of kids’ meal toys;
and other child-directed marketing,
such as advertisements for children’s
birthday parties.
Child-Directed Marketing Within and
Around Fast-Food Restaurants
Introduction
Consumption of fast food has increased over the past few
decades and is associated with poor health outcomes,
including increased risk of obesity.
1
Fast food is the second-
largest source of calories among youths ages 2 to 18,
accounting for 13 percent of their total caloric intake.
2
Many children eat fast food often: in 2007–08, 33 percent
of 2- to 11-year-olds and 41 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds
consumed food or beverages from a fast-food restaurant on a
given day.
3
Children who eat fast food have a higher intake of
calories, total fat, saturated fat, sodium, sugar, and sugar-
sweetened beverages than those who do not eat fast food.
4
Children who eat fast food also are less likely to meet dietary
recommendations for fruits, vegetables, and dairy.
5
The fast-food industry spends $660 million to market its
products to children and adolescents each year and spends
the most on toys for kids’ meals—$360 million for the cost
of toys alone.
6
These efforts help fast-food restaurants
sell more than 1.2 billion kids’ meals annually, and those
sales account for 20 percent of all foods and beverages
sold for consumption by children.
6
This has serious health
implications. Research overwhelmingly shows that the vast
majority of fast-food kids’ meals do not align with national
dietary recommendations
7,8
and that early exposure to
marketing practices instills brand recognition and shapes
future consumption patterns.
9,10