Policy Interference
Recommendations Regarding Sports Sponsorships and Endorsements Currently, there are no government-based regulations on sports sponsorships with food companies in the United States. However, one approach to limiting the association between sports and unhealthy food and beverage products is to provide funding to organizations that rely on monetary assistance from these food and beverage companies (i.e., compensatory funding). This government-driven initiative would support promotion of healthy activities and prevention of chronic disease [100]. The Victorian Health Promotion Foundation in Australia, for example, targets contributors to poor health and provides programs to influence healthier lifestyles such as increasing access to fresh food and reducing salt intake [101]. Although known to contribute to childhood obesity rates in the United States, the government is unable to restrict food and beverage marketing under the First Amendment, and food and beverage companies often use this argument to defend their marketing practices. However, some companies involved in the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative pledge to limit their marketing practices by not advertising unhealthy products (e.g., chips) to children aged 6 to 12 years and to not advertise to children younger than 6 years. Yet, study results show that children aged 6 to 11 years were exposed to 53% more snack food products over a 4-year period from companies that pledged not to do so [49]. Therefore, policymakers should propose policies that target unhealthy food products while proposing healthy alternatives. Still, efforts to circumvent or squash public health policies may foreshadow future antipolicy efforts of the food industry.
