September 20, 2013 – Maria Parra-Orlandoni
In the Spring 2013 semester, LIDS completed a project entitled “Public Health and Food Advertising to Children” under the supervision of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe with Instituto Alana and ANDI as clients. Instituto Alana, a non-profit dedicated to children in Brazil, has been focusing on addressing serious public health issues that impact children as a result of development. ANDI is a news agency for children’s rights that is one of the leading NGOs in Latin America working at the intersection of media and development.
A team of LIDS students, led by Maria Parra-Orlandoni and Edgardo Perez, analyzed food marketing to children, focusing on regulating advertising to children for foods with high levels of salt, fats, and sugars, as well as beverages with low nutritional content. The team conducted comparative research to examine the self-regulation initiatives as compared to government regulation initiatives in an effort to identify the most effective policies for addressing Brazil’s nutritional issues and obesity epidemic that affects 15-30% of the children in Brazil.
Instituto Alana reported a summary of the LIDS team’s major findings in a recent blog post. Some excerpts of the post are translated to English below:
“The [LIDS] researchers conclude that the existence of a legal system that empowers underlying supervision and compliance with the rules is critical to the success of self-regulation….”
“[The LIDS findings] also affirm that if self-regulation does not have enforcement, i.e., liability and ability to punish, it will not be successful. In addition, LIDS research emphasizes the importance of setting clear rules that do not generate ambiguities causing overlaps or rules that allow the market to create their criteria according to private interests.”