The healthfulness of major food brands according to Health Canada's nutrient profile model for proposed restrictions on food marketing to children

Objective: To examine the proportion of products offered by leading food brands in Canada that are 'unhealthy' according to Health Canada's (HC) nutrient profile model for proposed restrictions on food marketing to children (M2K-NPM).

Design: Nutritional information for products offered by top brands was sourced from the University of Toronto FLIP and Menu-FLIP 2020 databases, respectively. HC's M2K-NPM, which includes thresholds for sodium, total sugars and saturated fat, was applied to products.

Setting: Canada.

Participants: 1,385 products from top breakfast cereal (n=15 brands, n=222 products), beverage (n=21 brands, n=769 products) and yogurt (n=10 brands, n=394 products) brands, and 3,153 menu items from 17 chain restaurants in Canada were assessed (n=60 unique brands overall).

Results: For 42% of brands (n=21), 100% of their products exceeded ≥1 nutrient threshold(s), with ≥50% of the products offered by 23 brands (46%) exceeding two thresholds. Specifically, one or more nutrient thresholds were exceeded by ≥50% of the products offered by 14/15 breakfast cereal brands, 18/21 beverage brands, all 10 yogurt brands, and all 17 restaurant brands. Notably, 100.0% of the products offered by 10 breakfast cereal, 6 beverage, 2 yogurt and 3 restaurant brands exceeded ≥1 threshold(s).

Conclusions: Most products offered by top food brands in Canada exceeded HC's M2K-NPM thresholds. Nonetheless, these brands could still be marketed under the proposed regulations, which exclude brand marketing (i.e., promotions without an identifiable product) despite its contribution to marketing power. These findings reinforce the need for Canada and other countries to include brand marketing in M2K policies.