Mobile marketing to children: a content analysis of food and beverage company apps.

Globally, mobile technology penetration among families has risen steadily. While this technology can be used to promote public health (e.g. through the mHealth movement), it also may have less desirous public health impacts. For example, food manufacturers may have created dynamic apps promoting obesogenic products similar to the unhealthy foods they market to children via television commercials and online food-branded games. Nevertheless, in the USA, large food manufacturers recently pledged to curtail the advertising of processed foods to youth,5 which may deter them from leveraging new mobile technologies. This first-of-its-kind study aimed to describe food-branded mobile applications (apps) available for children on iOS devices (e.g. the iPad) across food product categories to better understand the nature
of this content in the USA.