marketing law

in schools. Products with any seal were also no longer allowed to use packaging or marketing specifically appealing to children on their packaging or marketing materials (for example, cartoons, free toys, and so on) (photo 8a.4). a series of studies to date have found that, since the first phase of the Chilean law, consumers’ use and understanding of the seals is high and there have been improvements in consumers’ knowledge and attitudes around nutrition and health (Correa et al. 2019); consumers, regardless of educational level, are purchasing fewer regulated products (taillie et al. 2020); and the formulation of products available in the Chilean market and in schools has changed to reduce the nutrients of concern (Massri et al. 2019; reyes et al. 2020). additionally, the advertising restrictions have translated to less children’s tv exposure to unhealthy food advertising (Correa et al. 2020; Jensen et al. 2020). to complement the food labeling and marketing effort, the government changed its beverage tax in 2014 to a tiered tax structure. the tax went from a 13 percent ad valorem tax to a tiered tax structure with no taxes on plain water and plain dairy-based drinks; 10 percent on all nonalcoholic beverages with sweeteners and less than 6.25 grams (g) sugar; and 18 percent on all nonalcoholic beverages with sweeteners equal to or over 6.25 g sugar. because of the relatively small increase (plus 5 percentage points) and decrease in prices (minus 3 percentage points), evaluations of this tax restructuring have shown that the price changes were muted (that is, they were partially absorbed by suppliers) and changes in purchases were consequently small (Caro et al. 2018).

PHOTO 8A.4

Example of cereal before (left) and after (right) Chile’s food labeling and marketing law

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