Front-of-package food labeling policies and child nutrition: Evidence from Chile’s comprehensive food policy reform

• In Event: Dietary and Health Impacts of Nutrition Policies

Abstract

Child overweight and obesity are a growing problem in Latin America. In Chile, the setting of this study, about half of school age children are affected by malnutrition by excess. In response, governments across Latin American have taken a variety of actions, including the enactment of front-of-package (FOP) food labeling policies. FOP policies seek to encourage consumers to make informed and healthier food choices by providing visible warnings of “high in content” (e.g., sodium) that commonly appear as traffic lights or as black octagons. Despite their popularity, there is almost no evidence showing whether and to what extent FOP policies are linked to reductions in child weight and improvements in nutrition.

We address this gap in the evidence and investigate the effect of Chile’s food labeling policy on the weight and nutrition of young children. Chile is an important case study as the first country to implement such a policy, and because Chile’s FOP policy was part of a larger food package that also included changes to the types of foods available in schools and limited child-centered advertising of unhealthy foods.

Our study uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ELPI – Spanish acronym) restricted to children between one and eight years old. The ELPI is a nationally representative survey of children and their caregivers that collects demographic information and anthropometric measures that we use to calculate BMI and derive indicators of overweight and obesity. The ELPI also includes some information about the types of foods children consume. Using the last wave of the ELPI collected between 2017 and 2018, our identification strategy exploits variation in the number of months a child was exposed to the FOP policy relative to their interview date. Our first empirical approach compares children with more months of exposure to the policy to children with fewer months of exposure living in the same municipality and controlling for a large complement of sociodemographic characteristics. We estimate these regressions for the full sample and also by stratifying our sample by whether children were also exposed to restrictions in the types of foods encountered in school.

We supplement these analyses with a second empirical approach using data from the National Board of School Assistance and Scholarships (JUNAEB – Spanish acronym). These data also provide anthropometric measurements for school-age children that allow us to calculate BMI and overweight and obesity indicators. Due to their longitudinal nature, we are able to estimate difference-in-difference event study regressions comparing children exposed to the policy to those not exposed, allowing us to address some of the limitations of the ELPI data.

Our initial results show little evidence that FOP policies alter the BMI, probability of overweight or obesity among Chilean children, even in the presence of additional policy components. Further we also see limited evidence that children are less likely to consume sugary drinks, sweets, or junk food. As countries in the region are considering reforming these policies, our study, can provide important evidence to guide these efforts.

Author

• Agustina Laurito, University of Illinois, Chicago
  Presenting Author