The internet is drastically changing how U.S. consumers shop for groceries, order food from restaurants, and interact with food marketing. Nearly one in five U.S. consumers buys groceries online at least once per month (1). Two-thirds of restaurant sales are generated by orders placed online or by phone (2). Half of consumers (51%) say third-party apps are their preferred way to browse for food, and 86% order on third-party apps at least twice a month (3).

Online ordering and delivery present new opportunities to expand food access. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, an online purchasing pilot allowing consumers with low-incomes to use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for online grocery shopping in several states led to an 8% reduction in the prevalence of food insufficiency (4).

However, the online food environment also presents new challenges for supporting consumers in making informed, healthy choices. Online food shoppers lack consistent access to the same product information as in-store shoppers (5, 6) and face an onslaught of marketing messages, often aimed at luring them to purchase less healthy products (7). Food companies also advertise through social media (8) and other online settings like children’s educational websites (9), often targeting children who are particularly vulnerable to such marketing (10).

There is an urgent need for new policies to help ensure the internet is a force for good. Many U.S. food laws were written before the internet and are an uneasy fit for the digital age. While Congress can pass new legislation to improve the online food environment, existing laws give ample authority for federal regulators—like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—to adapt old laws to new environments. The Supreme Court recently struck down the Chevron judicial doctrine (11), denying any special deference to agencies in interpreting their own statutes, and expanded the “major questions” doctrine (12), preventing agencies from taking new actions of “vast economic and political significance” without clear direction from Congress. But federal regulators still have the ability to apply existing laws to emerging industries. State and local governments can also adopt policies to strengthen consumer protections when federal law does not preempt such policies.

This article presents legally feasible policy opportunities to promote food access, transparency and fairness, and nutrition in three settings: online grocery retail, online restaurant ordering, and marketing on social media and other online platforms.

Online grocery shopping could improve food access, especially for the 40 million Americans living in areas with low income and low food access (13). The brick-and-mortar retail environment could still be improved to promote healthy foods, but healthy choices are even less clear in online grocery retail. Nutrition information can be hard to find for food sold online (5). Further, food and beverage manufacturers pay grocery stores large amounts of money to promote and place predominantly unhealthy products in prominent store locations (14), both in store (15) and online (16).

Restaurant foods in the U.S. are often high in calories, sodium, and added sugars (35). FDA requires calorie disclosures on all menus from U.S. chain restaurants with 20 or more locations, Philadelphia requires sodium warnings on chain restaurant menu items that contain more than a day’s worth of sodium (2,300 milligrams), and New York City (NYC) requires those same sodium warnings plus warnings on chain restaurant menu items containing more than a day’s worth of added sugars (50 grams) (36–39). These labeling policies can improve the nutritional quality of food orders (40, 41) and encourage restaurants to sell healthier items (42). To have their full intended benefit, requirements for nutrition information and safety warnings must apply to menus regardless of where people view them, whether in a physical restaurant, on a website, or on a third-party ordering app.

Children’s exposure to marketing via social media and other online platforms is concerning because food marketing exposure can impact children’s food preferences, choices, and intake (49), and their ability to understand the persuasive intent of advertising is not yet fully developed (10). Much of the food marketed to kids online is unhealthy. In one study, 72% of children and adolescents were exposed to food and beverage advertising on social media apps, and the most common exposures were to ads for fast-food restaurants, sugar-sweetened beverages, and candy and chocolate (50).

The FTC Act allows FTC to regulate unfair and deceptive business practices, including certain online marketing activities (51). FTC’s Endorsement Guides address unfair and deceptive advertising practices in advertisements containing endorsements, defined as “any advertising, marketing, or promotional message for a product that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser” (52), including—for example— social media posts from paid influencers. In 2023, FTC updated the Endorsement Guides to include a section titled “Endorsements Directed to Children,” which notes that practices that may be appropriate in content aimed at adult audiences may not be appropriate in content aimed at children (53). However, FTC does not provide practical advice for handling endorsements in content specifically aimed at children, stating only “Practices that would not ordinarily be questioned in advertisements addressed to adults might be questioned in such cases” (53). The agency should better protect children from unfair unhealthy food and beverage advertising online by providing more specific language on best practices for endorsement disclosure for advertisements aimed at children.

The FTC Act’s “6(b) authority” also empowers FTC to require businesses to file reports and answer questions about their business practices, and to publish wide-ranging agency studies based on such reports and information (54–56). FTC used its 6(b) authority to conduct investigations and publish reports on food industry expenditures on marketing to children in 2008 and 2012 (57, 58). These reports provided insight into companies’ spending on marketing to children, which products are most frequently advertised, and through which channels children are exposed to food advertising (57, 58). However, the most recent of these reports used data from 2009 (58). FTC should publish an updated food-marketing-to-kids report, paying special attention to digital marketing, including how companies may be disproportionately advertising to specific demographic groups and marketing on online learning platforms. This report would help inform regulatory, legislative, and industry self-regulatory activities.

Finally, state governments should leverage their consumer protection statutes and pass policies to strengthen them. For example, New York’s proposed Predatory Marketing Prevention Act would direct courts to consider the age of the target audience and other factors that might affect comprehension in determining when food marketing (which includes online marketing) is false or misleading, enhancing the state attorney general’s ability to prosecute companies for such predatory marketing (59).

Nutrition misinformation is another serious concern in the online food marketing environment. FDA and FTC have limited authority to address false and misleading statements that are not tied to the promotion of specific products or brands, but a clear step FTC can take to promote public trust in advertising is to take action more often against social media influencers who fail to disclose sponsored content. While such actions cannot eliminate misleading information from the internet, transparency regarding funding for endorsements helps consumers evaluate the trustworthiness of the message. In 2023, the agency sent warning letters to the American Beverage Association, Canadian Sugar Institute, and 12 nutrition influencers for failing to employ required disclosures on paid advertisements that promoted the safety of aspartame and sugary products (60). FTC should continue to monitor and take action against such violations and establish a means for the public to easily report known or suspected violations.

As the online food environment becomes increasingly influential in guiding consumers’ access to food and information, federal regulators and state and local lawmakers should take advantage of the many policy opportunities to promote food access, transparency, and healthy choices through online food sales and marketing.

In doing so, policymakers must consider the challenges and potential unintended consequences of implementing new policies (see Table 1).

FDA and FTC have limited resources for policy enforcement. State and local governments may face pushback when adopting policies that apply to online settings accessed from both within and outside of their jurisdictions. Retailers could decide not to accept online SNAP payments to avoid complying with labeling and marketing requirements tied to online SNAP, thus negating recent improvements in food access from online SNAP expansion. New food labeling and marketing requirements often face opposition from the food industry, including threats to increase food prices. And policies restricting food marketing to kids online must contend with privacy concerns, such as balancing the need to know the age of users with the risks of collecting personal information. Fortunately, these challenges are not insurmountable and policies can be creatively and flexibly designed to avoid such unintended consequences.

Future research should explore policies outside the scope of this article but related to consumer protection in the online food environment, including those seeking to decrease prices of food sold online (e.g., commission fee caps and price discrimination), improve wages and workplace protections for food delivery workers, increase food safety (e.g., safe handling protocols for delivery drivers and bikers), and ensure data privacy and security (e.g., protection of user data and prohibition of unfair ad targeting based on factors such as SNAP status or age).

The online food environment presents myriad challenges and opportunities for improving food access, transparency, and nutrition. Federal, state, and local policymakers must meet the moment and ensure adequate regulation of online spaces to support consumers in making informed, healthy choices.