Content analysis of food advertisements on popular indian television channels among children and youth: a cross-sectional study

# Background Exposure to food marketing through television is a pathway impacting food choices and purchasing behavior among children and adolescents and can contribute to overweight and obesity. The study conducted a detailed content analysis of food advertisements on popular television channels among children and youth in India. It also explored the differences in the content of these advertisements: a) between channels (children vs youth); b) within the channel by day type (weekend and weekdays) and time. # Methods A cross-sectional study was undertaken on six popular national television channels among children (2-14 years) and youth (\>14 years). Data was collected for three consecutive weeks (September 2020) during selected hours on both weekdays and weekends (4:00pm to 10:00 pm), with additional hours (10.00am-2:00pm) on weekends, by adapting the existing validated tools. Statistical methods like Pearson's chi-squared test, Fisher's exact test, and independent t-test were used. # Results A higher proportion of Food advertisements were seen on children's channels (38%) than youth channels (23%) (*P*\<0.001). By day type, no statistically significant difference was seen for Food advertisements shown on children's (*P*=0.553) and youth channels (*P*=0.513). Maximum advertisements were seen on weekdays between 8 pm--9 pm on children's and youth channels. Similarly, on weekends, 4 pm-5 pm for children's channels and 7 pm-8 pm for youth channels. Majority of the Food advertisements were high in fat, salt, and sugar (88.6%) irrespective of channel (children and youth) and day type (weekend or weekday). On children's channels, food high in fat, salt and sugar were advertised more on weekends than weekdays (*P*=0.006), but this difference was not significant on youth channels (*P*=0.089). Of these foods, it was foods high in sugar that were seen more on children's (55.2%) than youth channel (41.5%) (*P*\<0.001). # Conclusions The study informed that advertisements targeted towards children and youth had specific timings and were majorly high in fat, salt, and sugar. There is a need for instituting systems for tracking compliance with regulations, on the content and timing of food advertisements, and developing national databases for tracking all broadcasts to periodically inform the enforcement of food advertisements targeting children and youth in India.