Outdoor Food Marketing and Public Health Impacts

Outdoor food marketing encompasses all forms of non-digital advertising for food and beverages encountered in public spaces, including billboards, street furniture, transport hubs and storefronts. Such marketing is a pervasive feature of urban and peri-urban environments and exerts a measurable influence on dietary preferences, purchasing behaviours and consumption patterns. Evidence indicates that the majority of outdoor food adverts promote energy-dense, nutrient-poor products, thereby contributing to obesogenic environments that foster unhealthy diets and heighten risks of obesity and related non-communicable diseases. Exposure is often greatest in areas of lower socioeconomic status and in the immediate vicinity of schools, reinforcing health inequalities from early life. Policymakers and public health practitioners are now examining regulatory and design-based interventions—including zoning restrictions, caps on unhealthy adverts and mandatory healthy-food placements—to mitigate these impacts and promote a more health-supportive public realm.

Research from Nature Portfolio

A novel deep-learning workflow has been developed to automate the detection and classification of unhealthy advertisements in street-level imagery. By analysing thousands of 360° images collected across diverse neighbourhoods, this approach enabled the rapid mapping of food, alcohol and gambling adverts at scale. Findings revealed a disproportionate concentration of unhealthy food promotions in deprived areas and near educational institutions, suggesting entrenched socio-spatial inequalities in advertising exposure. The method offers a scalable, objective tool for monitoring outdoor marketing and provides robust evidence to support the design and evaluation of policy measures aiming to limit unhealthy advertising in public spaces.

Outdoor Food Marketing and Public Health Impacts publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in outdoor food marketing and public health impacts across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Obesogenic environment: A setting in which external factors—such as widespread availability and promotion of energy-dense foods—encourage excessive caloric intake and sedentary behaviours, contributing to obesity risk.

Socioeconomic status (SES): A composite measure of an individual’s or area’s economic and social position, often defined by income, education and occupation, which influences exposure to health determinants.

High fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) products: Foods and beverages characterised by elevated levels of fats, sodium and simple sugars, commonly associated with poor nutritional quality and adverse health outcomes.

Persuasive creative strategies: Marketing techniques—such as premium offers, use of characters and emotional appeals—designed to enhance the attractiveness and memorability of product promotions.

References

1. Assessing exposure to outdoor advertisement for products high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS); is self-reported exposure a useful exposure metric?. BMC Public Health (2023).
2. A scoping review of outdoor food marketing: exposure, power and impacts on eating behaviour and health. BMC Public Health (2022).
3. Mapping of outdoor food and beverage advertising around primary and secondary schools in Kampala city, Uganda. BMC Public Health (2021).
4. A deep learning approach to identify unhealthy advertisements in street view images. Scientific Reports (2021).