Australian supermarket catalogues promote unhealthy eating, study finds

Unhealthy foods are the most promoted items in Australian supermarket catalogues, reveals a study conducted by obesity prevention researchers.

The team from Deakin University assessed the catalogue content of the four leading Australian chains and found that 66 percent of the products being advertised were not among the core foods recommended for a healthy diet. The findings were detailed in a study published in the journal Health Promotion International.

“The results of this study suggest that supermarket catalogues contribute towards an environment that supports unhealthy eating behavior,” said Dr Adrian Cameron, a senior research fellow with the university’s WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention.

For the study, the researchers compared the foods advertised catalogues from Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA for 12 weeks. They grouped the products into four categories based on the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating.

Items in the five core food groups are those that should be consumed daily and in wide variety, such as fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat, grains and water. Discretionary foods, meanwhile, are those that should only be eaten sometimes, such as soft drinks, confectionary and chocolate, chips, desserts and ice creams, unhealthy ready meals, processed meats, jams, energy drinks, cordial, fats and oils. Rounding off the categories are alcohol and other foods such as tea, coffee, natural sweeteners, herbs and spices.

The team found that only 34.2 percent of advertised products were in the five core food groups recommended for daily consumption. The majority belonged to discretionary foods, alcohol and the “others” category.

“With guidelines suggesting that discretionary foods should only constitute a small component of the total diet, these results show that supermarket catalogues are clearly incompatible with dietary recommendations,” Cameron said.

The team’s findings on the content of the Australian catalogues are consistent with supermarket brochures in many other countries.

In a separate study published in the international journal Preventive Medicine, a team of researchers also analysed the content of catalogues from the major supermarket chains in 12 countries, including Australia. The products were also grouped into four categories according to the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating.

The researchers found that unhealthy food was particularly prominent in catalogues from most countries. The only exceptions were the Philippines, with reportedly no unhealthy food, and India, with 11 percent unhealthy food.

Since supermarkets are a major source of food in most high-income countries, Cameron believes their promotion of unhealthy foods could be a major barrier to halting the global obesity epidemic. Efforts to restrict unhealthy food marketing should also focus on supermarkets, he said.

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