Charlene Elliott
Biographic Data
| ID | 113794 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charlene Elliott |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charlene |
| FAMILY NAME | Elliott |
| SIGNATURE | ELLIOTT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Calgary |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2615-2144 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
What’s in the cereal aisle? An analysis of child-targeted cereals in Canada
Purpose To examine the nutritional quality and nature of packaged cereals targeted to children. Design/methodology/approach All child-targeted cereals were collected from four major retailers in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and examined for their marketing techniques, nutritional profile and in light of industry and government-led criteria for advertising regulations. Findings 103 children’s cereals were examined. Overall, cartoons were the most pre…
Assessing the nutritional quality of gluten-free packaged foods for children
Purpose To examine the nutritional quality and nature of gluten-free (GF) products targeted to children. Design/methodology/approach All child-targeted foods were collected from two national grocery retailers in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Child-targeted products with a GF claim were compared with those without such a claim using two nutrient profiling models, the Pan American Health Organization Nutrient Profiling Model (PAHO) and the 2023 World H…
The power of product
Food advertising shapes children’s preferences for unhealthy foods, contributing to poor diets and increased risk of obesity and non communicable diseases. This study explored children’s perceptions of child and non-child-targeted food advertising. Open-ended online interviews with 17 participants, recruited through convenience sampling, were conducted where children were prompted with four advertisements (ads): a child-targeted and non-child-tar…
The visual style of food marketing
Unhealthy food marketing to youth on digital platforms is engaging and widespread, prompting calls from public health bodies to restrict and/or monitor this marketing. Yet little is known about what teenagers find persuasive within the online food advertisements they see, especially on teen-dominated platforms like TikTok. This exploratory study examines the visual style of food advertising on TikTok. Using multimodal thematic visual analysis, it…
Child and non-child-targeted food and beverage advertisements on child television in two policy environments in Canada
While the impact of child-targeted unhealthy food advertising is well-established, children are also exposed to non-child-targeted advertisements. Studying the frequency and effects of both is essential to fully understand advertising's influence on children's health. This study aimed to analyze the frequency of non-child-targeted versus child-targeted food and beverage advertising on children's television stations in two different policy environ…
Food marketing to teenagers
Food marketing is a conspicuous part of the digital landscape for teenagers, with the aims of influencing preferences, purchases and consumption. Yet little is known about the nature and persuasive power of such marketing, especially across the platforms most popular with teens. Given this research gap, this exploratory study aimsed to shed light on the "digital palate" being advertised to teenagers and the specific appeals they found salient wit…
Food marketing on digital platforms
Objective: Given the aggressive marketing of foods and beverages to teenagers on digital platforms, and the paucity of research documenting teen engagement with food marketing and its persuasive content, the objective of this study is to examine what teenagers see as teen-targeted food marketing on four popular digital platforms and to provide insight into the persuasive power of that marketing. Design: This is an exploratory, participatory resea…
The “risk object” of cannabis edibles
Young adults are the most prominent users of cannabis in Canada, which was legalised for recreational use in 2018. Edibles are a highly popular form of cannabis delivery for this age group, yet little qualitative research explores young adult perspectives on edibles, including how edibles function socially for them, or are viewed in terms of risk. This study fills this research gap, conducting focus groups with 57 young adults (ages-18–24) in Cal…
Experiences and perceived outcomes of a grocery gift card programme for households at risk of food insecurity
Objective: This study explored programme recipients’ and deliverers’ experiences and perceived outcomes of accessing or facilitating a grocery gift card (GGC) programme from I Can for Kids (iCAN), a community-based programme that provides GGC to low-income families with children. Design: This qualitative descriptive study used Freedman et al’s framework of nutritious food access to guide data generation and analysis. Semi-structured interviews we…
Tracking teen food marketing
Food marketing has long been recognized to influence children's food preferences and consumption patterns, yet only in recent years have teenagers been recognized as a uniquely vulnerable audience for food marketing appeals. Marketing pressures on teenagers around food promotion continue to intensify, yet little is known about the marketing channels and specific persuasive appeals targeting this audience. Given this research gap, this participato…
Communication and Health
Food Promotion and Children's Health
Food marketing to children is ubiquitous and persuasive. It primarily promotes foods of poor nutritional quality, influences children's food preferences and habits, and is a factor in childhood obesity. Given that food marketing relentlessly targets children in traditional/digital media and the built environment, children need critical media literacy skills that build their understanding of food marketing's persuasive effects. However, little res…
Assessing public health messaging about cannabis edibles
In light of the recent legalization of cannabis in Canada, and the prevalence of edibles as a preferred mode of consumption for young adults, there is a need for evidence-based youth-targeted public health messaging on edibles that resonates with this audience. To explore Canadian young adult views on existing public health messaging regarding cannabis edibles, we conducted 8 focus groups with 57 university students ages 18 to 24 (32 women; 25 me…
Food Marketing and Power
Food marketing is powerful and prevalent, influencing young people's food attitudes, preferences, and dietary habits. Teenagers are aggressively targeted by unhealthy food marketing messages across a range of platforms, prompting recognition of the need to monitor such marketing. To monitor, criteria for what counts as teen-targeted food marketing content (i.e., persuasive techniques) must first be established. This exploratory study engaged teen…
Cannabis edibles packaging
Food marketing to teenagers
Food marketing and the regulation of children’s taste
Playing with food has long been understood as a part of childhood, with adults placing rules around children’s eating. Over the past few decades, children’s imaginative food play has been commodified by the food industry—the play has been packaged and sold back to children, with fun appeals, cartoon characters, and bright packaging used to identify packaged foods as “for kids”. Yet with increasing rates of childhood obesity, the very foods design…
My coupons are like gold”
Objective: The British Columbia Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon Program (FMNCP) provides low-income households with coupons valued at $21/week for 16 weeks to purchase healthy foods in farmers’ markets. Our objective was to explore FMNCP participants’ experiences of accessing nutritious foods, and perceived program outcomes. Design: This study used qualitative description methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with FMNCP particip…
Communication and Health
Radical transparency
In recent years, radical transparency has become an increasingly popular buzzword in food industry circles. Among other things, radical transparency means taking an "open kitchen approach" to clearly communicate to consumers what is in their products so that informed decisions can be made. Also known as the clean label trend, the idea of transparency in food labeling has varied expression. Transparency is core to Health Canada's current initiativ…
From fun to fraught
In an era of industrialized food production, ultra-processed foods, “Big Food” marketing, and growing obesity rates, food has come to be framed as an object of risk – and as an object of regulation. Such reframing has fascinating implications related to issues of responsibility and decision making, especially when it comes to children’s food. This article probes the relationship between representation, regulation and “risky” consumption with resp…
Assessing Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements Marketed to Children in Canada
Given the growth of supplements specifically designed for children in Canada, this study examines the nutrient levels of these products, and evaluates them in light of the US Health and Medical Division (HMD)-formerly the Institute of Medicine-and Health Canada's recommendations. Content analysis was used to document the nutrient levels of child-targeted vitamins, minerals and fish oils/omega-3s (n = 80) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Products were…
Nutrient Profiling and Child-Targeted Supermarket Foods
Marketing unhealthy food and beverages to children is a pervasive problem despite the negative impact it has on children's taste preferences, eating habits and health. In an effort to mitigate this influence on Canadian children, Health Canada has developed a nutrient profile model with two options for national implementation. This study examined the application of Health Canada's proposed model to 374 child-targeted supermarket products collecte…
Sensorium®
Sensory trademarks present a compelling case in which to explore the senses as “containers of possibility,” and this article explores the emergence and logic of sensory trademarks from a legal and marketers’ perspective. Using sensory trademark cases from the United States, I suggest that the current socio-legal environment opens a conversation about what I would call sensory capitalism—the monetization of the senses rather than the propertizatio…
Beauty and the Banana
Marketing Fun Foods
Childhood obesity is a significant problem that requires innovative solutions. This article suggests that researchers and policy-makers move beyond a scrutiny of junk food and televised advertisements to children to focus on the messages targeted to children in the supermarket. Following a content analysis of fun foods marketed to children, the article (a) outlines why the recoding of “regular” food into “fun food” contributes to the childhood ob…
Food as people
Healthy Choice
Food marketing to teenagers
Promoting children’s health
Parents' Choice
This article examines the perspectives of Canadian parents to detail their views on the regulation of child-targeted supermarket foods. Even though regulatory recommendations exist on various aspects of food marketing to children, no published research examines what parents think of the hundreds of child-targeted foods available in the supermarket, and whether parents think any regulatory measures on these foods are necessary—or even desired. The…
Food Branding and Young Children’s Taste Preferences
Packaging Health
Concerns over health and obesity have led to a range of “better-for-you” food products targeted at consumers. This analysis examines 354 supermarket foods targeted at children in Canada, assessing the nutritional quality and types of appeals of “better-for-you” packaged foods compared to “regular” fare. While “better-for-you” products fared better nutritionally (particularly for fat or sodium), high levels of sugar are evident in both categories.…
Considering the Connoisseur
This article provides a brief, exploratory probe into how theories of taste might be used to inform a very specific practice of taste—that of connoisseurship—in contemporary democratic culture. The focus is on the role of language in this practice, which takes centre stage as a means of both configuring taste and performing connoisseurship. The rise of specialty coffee and the popularization of wine are examined as two cases in which the language…
Purple Pasts
While developments in intellectual property have opened the door for trademarking color alone or color per se, it is important to observe that color codification is not a new phenomenon. This article outlines the quest to metaphorically trademark purple in antiquity and to provide it with clear “secondary meaning.” It highlights how language, literature, and sumptuary law was deployed to infuse purple with the appropriate symbolism, and it links …
Canada's Great Butter Caper
In 2005, Canada's Supreme Court ruled on Quebec's longstanding law prohibiting the sale of yellow margarine. While the precise color of margarine might seem trivial, the dispute carries on the country's century-old tradition of placing margarine in the legal spotlight. Margarine's long and bizarre history opens the door for probing the notion of legislative intent and the belief in a product's communicative potential. The buttery impostor has bee…
Consuming caffeine
Tracking teen food marketing
Food marketing has long been recognized to influence children's food preferences and consumption patterns, yet only in recent years have teenagers been recognized as a uniquely vulnerable audience for food marketing appeals. Marketing pressures on teenagers around food promotion continue to intensify, yet little is known about the marketing channels and specific persuasive appeals targeting this audience. Given this research gap, this participato…
From fun to fraught
In an era of industrialized food production, ultra-processed foods, “Big Food” marketing, and growing obesity rates, food has come to be framed as an object of risk – and as an object of regulation. Such reframing has fascinating implications related to issues of responsibility and decision making, especially when it comes to children’s food. This article probes the relationship between representation, regulation and “risky” consumption with resp…
Sensorium®
Sensory trademarks present a compelling case in which to explore the senses as “containers of possibility,” and this article explores the emergence and logic of sensory trademarks from a legal and marketers’ perspective. Using sensory trademark cases from the United States, I suggest that the current socio-legal environment opens a conversation about what I would call sensory capitalism—the monetization of the senses rather than the propertizatio…
TasteTM
Developments in intellectual property law (and its interpretation) have opened the door for new claims to “ownership” in the domain of food. From the copyrighting of recipes to the trademarking of the “cylindrical configuration” of the Cinnabon cinnamon bun, food and its sensory properties appears to be increasingly governed, channeled, and transformed by commercial demands and concerns over competition. The unique role of color in this phenomeno…
Eatertainment and the (Re)classification of Children's Foods
Ideas of fun and play have emerged as dominant characteristics in children's packaged food marketing. This article examines both the expression and implications of “eatertainment” in children's packaged food products, contrasting it with the theme of engagement that typifies the marketing of many adult foodstuffs. I detail how child-oriented packaged food both embodies and communicates (historical, culturally specific) ideas about childhood, and …
Crayoned Culture
We have played no small part in the awakening of this country to a great color consciousness. Today our color, like our music, is an expression of the age we are living in. Through color, hue and form, America is expressing her culture, her sense of the beautiful ... Annual Report of the TCCA (Textile Color Card Association), 1929 (CAUS Archive)Although colour saturates culture, one rarely considers how colour is controlled. Colour standardizat…
Color codification
This paper explores the intersection between color, culture and the legal domain; it reveals how recent, and disturbing, developments in trademark law have allowed for corporate ownership of the powerful communicative media of color and discusses the implications of this (colorful) codification. Mapping the communication of color within our contemporary legal, political and social environment, the paper addresses how color's vibrant significatory…
Consuming caffeine
Crayoned Culture
We have played no small part in the awakening of this country to a great color consciousness. Today our color, like our music, is an expression of the age we are living in. Through color, hue and form, America is expressing her culture, her sense of the beautiful ... Annual Report of the TCCA (Textile Color Card Association), 1929 (CAUS Archive)Although colour saturates culture, one rarely considers how colour is controlled. Colour standardizat…
Color codification
This paper explores the intersection between color, culture and the legal domain; it reveals how recent, and disturbing, developments in trademark law have allowed for corporate ownership of the powerful communicative media of color and discusses the implications of this (colorful) codification. Mapping the communication of color within our contemporary legal, political and social environment, the paper addresses how color's vibrant significatory…
Unlabelled
Sometimes, Goliath wins
Considering the Connoisseur
This article provides a brief, exploratory probe into how theories of taste might be used to inform a very specific practice of taste—that of connoisseurship—in contemporary democratic culture. The focus is on the role of language in this practice, which takes centre stage as a means of both configuring taste and performing connoisseurship. The rise of specialty coffee and the popularization of wine are examined as two cases in which the language…
Pink
This article focuses on the vibrant communicative media of colour, outlining its “codification” in public space and various challenges levelled at particular colour “codes.” Colour codification is presented as an active site where the visual is framed and deployed to advance particular ideas and goals—but is also strongly contested. Pertinent literature on the use of colour in public space is reviewed, providing a grounding for the analysis of ri…
Regimes of Vision and Products of Color
This article argues in favor of opening up media studies and visual studies to a new line of sensory inquiry—namely, embracing color as a powerful and pertinent mode of communication. It probes the contemporary state of color products and/or products of color through three interconnected categories (that is, color as expression of identity or quality; color as mark of individuality and color as cosmetic) to reveal not only the complex interplay b…
Purple Pasts
While developments in intellectual property have opened the door for trademarking color alone or color per se, it is important to observe that color codification is not a new phenomenon. This article outlines the quest to metaphorically trademark purple in antiquity and to provide it with clear “secondary meaning.” It highlights how language, literature, and sumptuary law was deployed to infuse purple with the appropriate symbolism, and it links …
Marketing Fun Foods
Childhood obesity is a significant problem that requires innovative solutions. This article suggests that researchers and policy-makers move beyond a scrutiny of junk food and televised advertisements to children to focus on the messages targeted to children in the supermarket. Following a content analysis of fun foods marketed to children, the article (a) outlines why the recoding of “regular” food into “fun food” contributes to the childhood ob…
Taste Rules
Food marketing comprises a core part of the current food environment and is routinely identified as a main contributor to childhood obesity. Excess body weight affects over 26% of children in Canada-prompting a range of interventions to address the problem. Food policy and regulation form a key strategy in current attempts to combat the toxic environment, and this paper outlines the various modes of regulation that work to govern children's "tast…
A Cold Cut Crisis
In the summer of 2008, one of the worst cases of food contamination in Canadian history was confirmed when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Maple Leaf Foods issued a “health hazard alert” warning the public not to serve or consumer Sure Slice brand cold cuts. This localized warning quickly spiralled into a major listeriosis epidemic. More than 200 Maple Leaf Foods products were recalled, but not in time to prevent 20 deaths, the illness of…
Healthy Food Looks Serious
Fun food is an overlooked, but increasingly significant, category of food targeted to children in the supermarket. These supermarket products emphasize foods’ play factor, interactivity, artificiality, and general distance from “regular” foods: food is positioned as “fun” and eating as “entertainment.” Using a series of focus groups, this study examined how children (segmented by age and gender) interpret these packaged appeals and how the themat…
Canada's Great Butter Caper
In 2005, Canada's Supreme Court ruled on Quebec's longstanding law prohibiting the sale of yellow margarine. While the precise color of margarine might seem trivial, the dispute carries on the country's century-old tradition of placing margarine in the legal spotlight. Margarine's long and bizarre history opens the door for probing the notion of legislative intent and the belief in a product's communicative potential. The buttery impostor has bee…
Eatertainment and the (Re)classification of Children's Foods
Ideas of fun and play have emerged as dominant characteristics in children's packaged food marketing. This article examines both the expression and implications of “eatertainment” in children's packaged food products, contrasting it with the theme of engagement that typifies the marketing of many adult foodstuffs. I detail how child-oriented packaged food both embodies and communicates (historical, culturally specific) ideas about childhood, and …
Toddler foods, children’s foods
Objective To critically examine child-oriented packaged food products sold in Canada for their sodium content, and to assess them light of intake recommendations, the current policy context and suggested targets. Design Baby/toddler foods ( n 186) and child-oriented packaged foods ( n 354) were coded for various attributes (including sodium). Summary statistics were created for sodium, then the children’s food products were compared with the UK F…
Packaging Fun
Childhood obesity has prompted an increased scrutiny of the foodscape, along with the call for innovative strategies to make our social environments more supportive of healthy eating. Child-targeted supermarket foods are an increasing, but typically overlooked, part of this food environment. Using content analysis, this article profiles the strategies used to market foods to children and their parents in the Canadian supermarket environment. Chil…
Packaging Health
Concerns over health and obesity have led to a range of “better-for-you” food products targeted at consumers. This analysis examines 354 supermarket foods targeted at children in Canada, assessing the nutritional quality and types of appeals of “better-for-you” packaged foods compared to “regular” fare. While “better-for-you” products fared better nutritionally (particularly for fat or sodium), high levels of sugar are evident in both categories.…
A Ban on Marketing of Foods/Beverages to Children
Healthy Choice
TasteTM
Developments in intellectual property law (and its interpretation) have opened the door for new claims to “ownership” in the domain of food. From the copyrighting of recipes to the trademarking of the “cylindrical configuration” of the Cinnabon cinnamon bun, food and its sensory properties appears to be increasingly governed, channeled, and transformed by commercial demands and concerns over competition. The unique role of color in this phenomeno…
Parents' Choice
This article examines the perspectives of Canadian parents to detail their views on the regulation of child-targeted supermarket foods. Even though regulatory recommendations exist on various aspects of food marketing to children, no published research examines what parents think of the hundreds of child-targeted foods available in the supermarket, and whether parents think any regulatory measures on these foods are necessary—or even desired. The…
Food Branding and Young Children’s Taste Preferences
Big Food’ and ‘gamified’ products
The promise of ‘fun’ is an increasingly common strategy used by Big Food in the promotion of packaged products. Gamification, or ‘making it fun’, has been identified as a top consumer packaged goods trend for 2014, and is finding its way into the spectrum of packaged goods and target markets. Once solely the preserve of children’s fare, fun is now applied to ‘junk’ food, ‘healthy’ food, snack food, ‘adult’ food, and ‘kids’ food. The rise and impl…
Communication and Health
“Health” is a highly prized positive value, a commodity and an industry—and also a topic of robust public and academic interest. This article aims to open a conversation about what a communications-oriented approach to health might look like. It reviews the Canadian Journal of Communication from its inception for instruction on how health-related topics have been examined by communication scholars, observing the lack of common questions and appro…
Food as people
Business (37 works) · Psychology (35 works) · Political science (34 works) · Medicine (30 works) · Marketing (27 works) · Advertising (26 works) · Food marketing (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Consumer Attitudes and Food Labeling (15 works) · Culinary Culture and Tourism (15 works)