Institutional gatekeeping of food and beverage marketing impacts marketing presence in schools and youth sportsSchool and Youth Sports Sites Feature Extensive Food Marketing

Food and beverage marketing to children is usually framed as communication between firms and individual consumers. In schools and organized youth sport, however, exposure depends on institutional decisions about procurement, fundraising, sponsorship, branded programs, facility advertising, equipment, awards, and food-service contracts. This Mini Review synthesizes evidence from these settings through an institutional-gatekeeping lens and asks how commercial access is granted, which organizational constraints sustain it, and how directly the evidence connects exposure with nutrition outcomes. School studies show that formal nutrition standards can coexist with fundraising, incentive programs, and corporate signage alongside differences in policy coverage and implementation capacity. Youth-sport studies likewise identify pervasive branded infrastructure, sponsorship, and service contracts, often involving products of nutritional concern. Across both settings, direct evidence is concentrated on marketing presence, product healthfulness, brand recall, and attitudes; the next step is to link institution-specific exposure with dietary intake and longer-term health outcomes. Policy options arising from this synthesis include rules governing commercial access and brand-level promotion, contract transparency and monitoring, and feasible replacement resources, with their effects on exposure and participation requiring evaluation. Research priorities include lower-resource systems, implementation outcomes, and links between institutional exposure and dietary behavior.