Assessment of the Canadian Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative’s Uniform Nutrition Criteria for Restricting Children’s Food and Beverage Marketing in Canada.

Imposing governmental restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children is a demanded policy action since in Canada, this remains self-regulated by the voluntary, industry-led Canadian Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CAI) whose participants pledge to only advertise products that satisfy its Uniform Nutrition Criteria to children. This study evaluated the stringency of this nutrient profiling (NP) model for restricting child-directed food and beverage marketing in Canada. Data was obtained from the University of Toronto Food Label Information Program (FLIP) 2013 database, providing nutritional information for 15,342 packaged products which were evaluated using the CAI Uniform Nutrition Criteria. Products with child-directed packaging and those from CAI participating companies were identified. Of the