ABSTRACT

Food classification according to NOVA classification system categorizes foods into four groups which includes: group 1: unprocessed/ minimally processed, group 2: processed culinary, group 3: Processed foods and group 4: ultra-processed foods. Ultra-process Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) generally refers to any action that alters food from its natural state, such as drying, freezing, milling, canning, or adding salt, sugar, fat, or other additives for flavor or preservation. Examples includes packaged snacks, cookies/biscuits, instant soups/ noodles, carbonated drinks, etc. These products were marketed majorly by means of advertisement on popular television channels. The general objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of ultra-processed food and beverage advertising on MTV Base channel. This study was an observational study, which Google form was shared to the public to select their frequent viewed channels. Programmes on the selected channel were recorded by a media auditing device (SLTV Decoder) from 6.00 to 24.00 hours for a total of 8 days including weekends. A total of 144h ofprogrammes on the TV channel including hours of advertising, were recorded and analysed. They were coded following a standardized codebook. Each advert was coded for time and date of airing, name ofthe programme, type of programme, company, brand, advert title and duration, and type of product. It was observed from the time slot table that the peak of advert for both food and non-food categories were in the hours of 15:00- 15:59pm to 17:00-17:59pm. Few core/healthy adverts was seen on the hours of 12:00-14:59PM with majority ofthe adverts being non-core/unhealthy. The findings ofthis study show that there is high frequency of food adverts on the selected channel (MTV base) and this affects the consumers buying behavior. Following the finding, there is a need to monitor and regulate food advertisement on the Nigerian TV channels this will help to reduce unhealthy food advertisement exposure